THE PRODIGAL SON 



THE PARABLE 



THE PRODIGAL SON 



WITH NOTES BY 



JAMES HAMILTON, D.D., F.LS. 



AND ILLUSTRATIONS BY 



HENRY COURTENAY SELOUS 



LONDON 

JAMES NISBET & CO. BERNERS STREET 

1867 









Printed by R. Clark, Edinburgh. 



CONTENTS. 

> • » * < 

Page 
The Fatherland . . . . . ' . . . i 

Leaving Home 17 

The Far Country . . . . . . . S3 

Riotous Living .49 

A Mighty Famine 65 

Feeding Swine . . 81 

A Wise Resolution . . . . . . . .97 

A Happy Meeting . . . . . . . -113 

The Best Robe . . . . . . . .129 

The Festival . . . . . . . . . 145 

An Angry Brother . , . . . . . .161 

A Righteous Father 177 

Index . . . 193 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 

DESIGNED BY HENRY COURTENAY SELOUS. 
ENGRAVED BY G. PEARSON. 

♦ ♦ » 



A certain man had two sons .... To face page 3 

The younger of them said to his father, Father, give me the portion 

of goods that falleth to me . . . . . . 19 ,/■- 

The yomiger son gathered all together, and took his journey into a 

far country . . . . . . . -35 

The younger son .... took his journey into a far country, and 

there wasted his substance with riotous living . , . .51 

He went and joined himself to a citizen of that country ; and he sent 

liim into his fields to feed swine . . . . .67 

He would fain have filled his belly with the husks that the swine did eat . Zt, 

When he was yet a great way off, his father saw him . , .99 

His father ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him . . .115 

Bring forth the best robe and put it on him ; and put a ring on his 

hand, and shoes on his feet . . . . . .131 

For this my son was dead, and is alive again ; he was lost, and is 

found. And they began to be merry . . . . .147 

Thy brother is come ; and thy father hath killed the fatted calf, 

because he hath received him safe and sound . . . .163 

He was angry, and would not go in : therefore came his father out, 

and entreated him . . . . , . . 1 79 



THE FATHERLAND 



A certain man had two sons." — Luke xv. 2. 




A CERTAIN MAN HAD TWO SONS. 



THE FATHERLAND. 



Our cords are clumsy. Strand by strand, and rope by 
rope, we twist our cables ; yet we dare not lengthen them 
too far, for fear their own weight break them, and in the 
strain of the tempest the strongest fly asunder like flax in 
flame. God spins his cords so fine that, except in dif- 
fracted light, you cannot see them ; but these cords of His 
are seldom broken. You befriend a youth or relieve a 
stranger, and you think no more about it ; till on a distant 
day, perhaps in a foreign land, in some hour of need, help 
is raised up, and in your deliverer you recognise the 
object of your former bounty. And just as in such an 
instance, held by a mystic clue, the little seed which you 
cast on the waters comes back into your bosom a loaf of 
bread ; so the old saying also holds true, and " curses 
come home, to roost." A crime is committed, and all 
trace is obliterated, every token buried ; but now that the 
head which holds the/fatal secret is laid on a dying pillow, 
the leash is pulled, and dark and croaking descends the 
bird of evil omen, or with fiery eye and crimson beak the 
vulture of despair, and with fear of coming judgment 
scares the guilty conscience. 



4 THE FATHERLAND. 

Of all God's cords the finest, and perhaps the strongest, 
is the cord of love. Quitting his native chimney, among 
the canals and grassy fields of Holland, the stork pur- 
sues the retiring summer, and soon overtakes it in 
Nubia or Morocco. There, quite unconscious of the 
fetter beneath his wing, he revels on the snakes of Taurus 
or the frogs of Nile : till at last, on a brilliant May morn- 
ing, there is a sharp tug, and then a long steady pull, 
and high overhead float the broad pinions, and presently 
in the streets of Haarlem the boys look up, and shout 
their welcome, as, with eager haste and noisy outcry, an 
old acquaintance drops down upon the gable, and, drawn 
back to the old anchorage by a hawser of a thousand 
miles, the feathery sails are once more furled. Like 
instinct over a generation s interval brings back the 
exile to his Highland glen. It matters not that in the 
soft Bermudas life is luxury ; it is of no avail that in this 
Canadian clearing a rosy household has sprung up and 
in proud affection clings around him ; towards the haunts 
of his childhood there is a strange deep-hidden yearning, 
which often sends absent looks towards northern stars, 
and ends at last in the actual pilgrimage. And although 
by the time of his return he finds that no money can buy 
back the ancestral abode ; althougrv as he crosses the 
familiar hill and opens the sunny strath, strange solitude 
meets him ; although when he comes up, the hamlet is 
roofless and silent, and the bonny beild, the nest of his 
boyhood, a ruin ; although behind the cold hearth rank 



THE FATHERLAND. 5 

nettles wave, and from the cairn covering the spot where 
in the mornings of another world he waked up so cosily, 
young weasels peep forth ; although the plane is cut down, 
or the bourtree, under whose sabbatic shadow his father 
used at eventide to meditate ; although where the vision 
dissolves a pang must remain, there is no need that he 
should go back, bleak and embittered, as to a disenchanted 
world. This glut of reality was wanted to quench a long 
fever : but even here, if his own heart is true, he will 
find that God's cord is not broken. Cottages dissolve 
and family circles scatter, but piety and love cannot 
perish. The cord is not broken ; it is only the mooring- 
post which a friendly hand has moved farther inland, 
and fixed sure and stedfast within the veil ; and as the 
strain which used to pull along the level is now drawing 
upward, the home which memory used to picture in the 
Highlands, faith learns to seek in Heaven. 

We too were once at home. As even pagan Cleanthes 
and Aratus sang — 

"We too are God's offspring."* 

The race opened its existence under the eye of God, 
made after his image ; and whether he exercised his 

* The well-known expression quoted and endorsed by St. Paul in 
his address to the Athenians, Acts xvii. 28, 29. Like Paul, Aratus, 
who flourished about 270 B.C., was a native of Cilicia. His poem, 
the Fhceno7nena, opens with an acknowledgment of Zeus, and our de- 
pendence upon him, and derivation from him : 

TidvT'q hk Albs Kexp'fjfJ-^da wavres' 
Toil yap /cat y^vos iafi^v. 



6 THE FATHERLAND. 

gentle dominion, or was occupied among the trees of the 
garden, or walked with his heavenly Father, listening to 
His voice in the cool of the day, nothing could be nobler 
or more blessed than that imperial infancy. Nor have 
we quite forgotten it. Betwixt what the Book has told 
us, and what is recalled by a dim mysterious memory, 
we feel that times are changed with us. We once were 
better off A love smiled over us, a glory shone around 
us, which never meets us now ; and many of our dearest 
words — Love, Joy, Innocence — seem to be so much a 
reminiscence of a far-off, long-faded time, that we may 
be excused for standing still and asking in bewilder- 
ment — 

" Have we been all at fault ? Are we the sons 

Of pilgrim sires who left their lovelier land % 

And do we call inhospitable climes 

By names they brought from home ?"* 

The true home of humanity is God, — God trusted, 
communed with, beloved, obeyed ; and 

" Not in entire forgetfulness, 
And not in utter nakedness," 

do we come " from God, who is our home," but " trailing 
clouds of glory with us."t Alloyed and interrupted by 
much that is base and wicked, there are in human nature 
still touches of tenderness, gleams of good feeling, noble 
impulses, momentary visitations of a natural piety, 

* Balder^ p. i8i. 
t Wordsworth's " Intimations of Immortality." 



THE FATHERLAND. 7 

brought away from that better time and Its blest abode, 
and which may be regarded as electric thrills along the 
line which connects with its Creator a fallen but re- 
deemed humanity : as so many gentle checks of that 
golden chain which will one day bring back God's 
banished, and see the world ** all righteous." 

Far from home, humanity is still in the hand of God. 
Not only is it subject to His righteous and irresistible 
sovereignty, but it has a place in his deep and desirous 
compassion. And for every one of us it is a solemn and 
affecting thought, that before he can be finally and for 
ever lost, he must " break the band and cast away the 
cord" by which forgiving mercy would draw him to 
itself. We know that it too often happens. Too often 
do we see men turn the back to God and not the face ; 
and the last glance we get of them they are still depart- 
ing. Still averse from God, and still departing, the cord 
of love and life's brittle thread snap together ; and 
passing the bourne beyond which is "• outer darkness," 
there is nothing which we are allowed to hope for them 
in that world where no gospel follows and no Holy 
Spirit strives. But, on the other hand, where there is 
any relenting towards the Ever-blessed, what can be 
more encouraging than the assurance that in the case of 
our fallen family, much as sin abounds, grace much more 
abounds ? and that, notwithstanding all we have done to 
forfeit the filial position, there is on God's side so much 
of fatherly affection as not only to desire our return, but 



8 THE FATHERLAND. 

to devise methods unprecedented and costly for bringing 
us back ? 

The head of the great household is God, and the 
earthly home He has constituted so as to be an image of 
his own paternity. Thaj; home is founded in love, and 
in administering it love is called forth every day, — often 
a pitying, forbearing, forgiving love, — a love sometimes 
severe and frowning, often self-denying, it may chance 
self-sacrificing. As the world now is — a ruin, with a 
remedial scheme in the midst of it — that home is the 
nearest image of the church, and should be the most 
efficient fellow- worker with it. "In the family the first 
man himself would receive lessons on self-government 
such as even the garden of Eden did not supply, and 
perpetual occasion for its exercise. In what a variety of 
ways would he learn to repeat to his children the sub- 
stance of the divine prohibition to himself — ' Thou shalt 
not eat of it' How soon would he who had had 
paradise for a home discover that if he would convert 
home into a paradise he must guard his offspring at this 
point, subordinating their lower propensities to their 
superior powers."* If presided over by those who 
themselves fear God — and otherwise no house is a 
home — there will be something sacred in its atmosphere, 
and alike enforced by affection and authority the lessons 
of heavenly wisdom will sink deep ; and with a sufficient 
probation superadded to a careful protection, it is to be 
* * Harris's Patriarchy, p. 113. 



THE FATHERLAND. 9 

hoped that, before transplantation into the world's rough 
weather, good dispositions may have been so far confirmed 
as only to strengthen by further trial. 

We must not be too confident. It would be rash 
to say that where the home is right the inmates never 
can go wrong. There was once a great heart-break in 
heaven : angels grieved, for so many of their brethren 
had gone away to return no more. Since then, another 
great prodigal has left the Father's house — for of all 
prodigals our race is the greatest. And when the Great 
Father has himself had to mourn over wayward runaway 
children, let us fence our habitations as we please, it 
would be too much to hope that evil shall never enter, 
or that headstrong folly shall never gather all together 
and go away. 

Still, the promise to believers includes their children, 
and the instances are anomalous and few where a hope- 
ful outset ends in a worthless old age. In seeking for 
your offspring the kingdom of heaven and the righteous- 
ness thereof, you who are parents may confidently claim 
the sympathy of the Father of spirits, and the succour of 
that great Teacher who has all hearts in his hand, and 
turns them as the rivers of water are turned. And the 
records of religious biography nearly all confirm the 
promise. The favoured Samuel is the son of the pray- 
ing Hannah. The young evangelist is the child of the 
believing Eunice, and Eunice, again, is the daughter of 
the like-minded Lois. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and 



10 THE FATHERLAND, 

Jacob is the God of Joseph also. The first martyr in 
the days of the bloody Mary was John Rogers. He is 
still represented by honourable and Christian descend- 
ants in this country ; and in the United States, where his 
children's children have reached the eleventh generation, 
it has been remarked that few families contain so many 
pious members, and singularly enough, with one inter- 
mission, the eldest son has always been a minister. 
Having frequently heard the remark that the sons of 
ministers and deacons turn out badly, the secretary of 
the Massachusetts Sabbath School Society instituted an 
inquiry in a district where he could insure correct returns. 
It contained 268 families of the class in question, and in 
these there were 1290 young persons above fifteen years 
of age. Out of these 1290 young people 884 were hope- 
fully pious, and the great majority (794) were united to 
the church of Christ. Amongst these households there 
were 56 highly-favoured families, with an aggregate 
grown-up membership of 249 individuals, where all were 
hopefully pious. On the other hand, out of the 1290 
only 17 had become dissipated, and most of these had 
broken down whilst away from home.'''^ 

In order to make your home the preparation for 
heaven, the first thing is to strengthen that cord of love 
by which you ought to hold your child, even as our 
heavenly Father holds his children. That love is yours 
already — an upleaping, uplooking affection, if you do not 
* Barnes on Isaiah lix. 21. 



THE FATHERLAND. ii 

destroy its tenderness by perpetual rebuffs, if you do not 
forfeit reverence by being yourself unworthy of it. " Ye 
fathers, provoke not your children to wrath ;" be not 
always scolding, reproving, punishing ; '' but bring them 
up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord." Take 
advantage of their affection for yourself, and use it as the 
appointed medium for drawing them into the love of 
God. When the soft iron is in the electric circuit it 
grows magnetic, and not only clings itself, but keeps 
lesser and kindred masses clinging : so when the soul is 
in the right relation to the living God, it acquires a 
strong induction — a mighty power of attracting others in 
the same direction. If your conduct is consistent — if 
your life goes by God's rules — power from on high will 
attend the occasional word or the special effort. Long 
lectures and formal advices are of small avail ; but should 
there occur some solemnising season — a time of deepened 
spiritual earnestness — a time when your own soul is 
melted by the love of Christ — a time when your boy him- 
self is brought to unwonted tenderness, by sickness or 
sorrow, or a departure from home ; — if at such a season 
you should speak to him fully, affectionately, seriously, 
like the last charge of David to Solomon, like Israel's 
farewell to his sons, a peculiar power and pathos will 
attend the words, and will secure the preservation of a 
father's legacy. 

Meanwhile, the precept is plain, the duty clear. 
Train up the child in the way he should go. If he is not 



12 THE FATHERLAND. 

to go in the way of low pastime and coarse indulgence, 
point him to higher joys ; open to him the well-spring of 
knowledge ; try to ascertain and develope a turn for 
some ennobling pursuit, or create a taste for the treasures 
bequeathed by genius. If he is not to go in the way of 
sinners — if you would preserve him from the temptations 
of idleness and the vacuity of an aimless existence — 
train him up in some craft or calling ; let him go forth 
into society fit to do, and to do well, some portion or other 
of that work of which the world has need, and which 
makes so sweet the bread and so pleasant the rest of the 
labourer. If he is not to go in the way that leadeth to 
destruction, make it plain that you would rather see him 
good than great ; and, yourself in the fear of God all 
the day, train him up in the way of simplicity and godly 
sincerity. Train him up in frugal tastes and self-deny- 
ing habits — if possible with a Roman hardihood of 
frame, and as much as may be with a Spartan disdain of 
luxury. Train him up in energy and self-reliance, grap- 
pling with difficulties, and learning independence by 
doing things for himself Train him up in manly frank- 
ness, that with open face he may meet each friendly 
overture, — in modesty withal, lest a precocious arrogance 
repel the wise, lest his own mental growth be stunted by 
a supercilious priggishness. Train him up in the way 
of universal good-will and general helpfulness, so that 
wherever there is a burden to be borne he may lend a 
hand ; so that wherever there is a friendly service to be 



THE FATHERLAND. 13 

done he may have an errand ; so that gratitude, affection, 
and the blessing of them that were ready to perish, may 
surround his goings, and then embalm his memory. 

After all, however, there is another influence which 
goes farther in creating the home. It is mother-love 
which endears the fatherland, and it is to the cradle that 
the fairy-line is fastened which even in the far country 
holds so mysteriously the heart of the wanderer. 

When Napoleon, with his army of invasion, lay at 
Boulogne, an English sailor who had been captured tried 
to escape in a little raft or skiff which he had patched to- 
gether with bits of wood and the bark of trees. Hearing 
of his attempt, the First Consul ordered him to be brought 
into his presence, and asked if he really meant to cross 
the Channel in such a crazy contrivance. *' Yes, and if you 
will let me, I am still willing to try." " You must have a 
sweetheart whom you are so anxious to revisit." *' No," 
said the young man, " I only wish to see my mother, who 
is old and infirm." '' And you shall see her," was the 
reply, " and take to her this money from me ; for she must 
be a good mother who has such an affectionate son." 
And orders were given to send the sailor with a flag of 
truce on board the first British cruiser which came near 
enough."' 

Napoleon was always eager to declare his own obliga- 
tions to his high-spirited and couragecfus mother, the 

* The story is told by Alison {French Revolution, ch. Ixxxi.), who 
quotes Las Casas. It has been turned into verse by T. Campbell. 



14 THE FATHERLAND. 

beautiful Letizia Ramolini ; but the difficulty would be to 
find any man of mark who has not made the same avowal."^^ 
Of a few biographical works lying near at this moment, 
^v^ out of six begin to the same tenor. Take an in- 
stance or two. The first is Kirby, long the patriarch of 
English entomology. " To his mother, and to her alone, 
he did not hesitate to affirm that he was indebted for his 
taste for natural history." While still a little child she 
gave him, as his most precious playthings, shells from an 
old family cabinet. He was exceedingly attracted by 
their different shapes and colours, and soon learned to 
know them every one, and ask for them by their right 
names ; and when a veteran of eighty-four he still showed 
his friends a little herbarium which with the help of his 
dear mother he had compiled at nine years of age.f Next 
comes Goethe. His mother " is one of the pleasantest 
figures in German literature. Her simple, hearty, joy- 
ous, and affectionate nature endeared her to all. . . She 
had read most of the best German and Italian authors, had 
picked up considerable desultory information, and had 
that * mother- wit' which so often in women and poets 
seems to render culture superfluous. . . To Wolfgang she 
transmitted her love of story-telling, her animal spirits, 
her love of everything which bore the stamp of distinctive 
individuality, and her love of seeing happy faces round 

* Perhaps we should except Napoleon's great rival ; see the article on 
Wellington in the Quarterly Review for July 1866. 
t Freeman's Life of the Rev. W. Kirby ^ pp. 17, 18. 



THE FATHERLAND, 15 

her.""'^ The last is the great critic and grammarian, 
Thiersch. His mother did not teach him Greek, but out 
of her Lutheran hymn-book she taught him songs about 
the Saviour and His dying love. She also taught him 
kindness to the poor, — a lesson which all through life 
he practised liberally. On one occasion, whilst a small 
boy, his mother left him at home with the door locked 
and the window open. A beggar woman came. There 
was a French crown on the table, which little Fritz at 
once handed out to her, bidding her tenderly " Come 
soon back again." She was so honest as not to go away 
till the lady returned, and for restoring the crown was re- 
warded with cakes and eight good groschen.f 

Yes, If you choose, let the foundation be granite, let 
heart of oak be the roof-tree. Let masculine energy, 
stern rectitude, unflinching endurance build up the pater- 
nal abode ; and assign to the head of the house such in- 
telligence, elevation, dignity, as beseem *' the father and 
the priest." But for the cheerful plenishing, for that 
warm inner atmosphere In which childhood nestles, and 
in which good feelings are fostered into life, for those 
first and most Influential lessons which precede all teachers 
and tutors, you must look to a kindlier and more per- 
vasive presence ; you must think of one who Is more 
than either housewife or learned lady. With calm, clear 
eyes, deep Insight, ready sympathy ; active, without bustle; 

* G. H. Lewes's Life of Goethe^ pp. 7, 8. 
t Fr. Thiersch's Leben (1866), vol. i. p. 3. 



1 6 THE FATHERLAND, 

alert, without over-anxious vigilance ; Ignorant perchance 
of aesthetic rules, yet with subtile touches transforming 
into a fine picture the home-spun canvas, and with a soft 
fairy music blending into harmony the noises of the 
day ; apathetic about stocks and shares and far-off 
millions, but with a keen appreciation of new sovereigns 
and no disdain for sixpences ; a mere formalist, if pro- 
fessing interest In city improvements or parochial reforms, 
but as touching torn curtains and threadbare carpets much 
exercised In spirit ; sure that the commotions of Europe 
will all come right, but shedding bitter tears at any out- 
break of juvenile waywardness, and praying earnestly, 
'' Oh, that Ishmael may live before thee !" with small belief 
in the transcendental philosophy, and allowing that much 
may be said on both sides, but In the Interpretation of the 
Ten Commandments positive, unreasoning, absolute ; in 
theology hopelessly confounding the distinctions of the 
schools, and in an innocent way adopting half the heresies, 
but drinking direct from the fountain that living water 
which others prefer chalybeate through the iron pipe or 
aerated from the filtering-pond, and in a style which 
Calvin and Grotius might equally envy teaching the little 
ones the love of the Saviour ; — the angel In the house 
moulds a family for heaven, and by dint of holy example 
and gentle control her early and most efficacious ministry 
goes farther than any other to lay the foundations of 
future excellence, and train up sons and daughters for the 
Lord Almighty. 



LEAVING HOME 



" The younger son gathered all together, and took liis journey." — Luke xv. 13, 




THE YOUNGER OF THEM SAID TO HIS FATHER, "FATHER, GIVE ME THE 
PORTION OF GOODS THAT FALLETH TO ME." 



LEAVING HOME. 



Seldom, It may be hoped, does a youth leave home 
simply because he has tired of it ; still more rarely, we 
trust, because he wishes to lead a life of mere self- 
indulgence. One instance, however, of this kind we do 
remember, with its unlooked-for ending. In the town of 
Huntly there was living, a hundred years ago, a lad lately 
returned from college, whose only quarrel with a rough 
and regardless neighbourhood was the insufficient scope 
it gave to his love of fun and frolic. Having heard a 
great deal about London, and believing that it was the 
place where every man might do that which is good in 
his own eyes, he gathered all together, and took his 
journey towards the southern capital. On the road, 
however, he turned aside to visit a kinsman who had 
himself led a life of notorious wickedness, but whose 
friendship he wished to retain. This relative he found 
on a bed of sickness ; but although his bodily sufferings 
were great, they were almost swallowed up in the 
anguish of his spirit. In a fearful tide of remorse, his 
sinful life came surging back upon his memory, and as 
God's waves and billows went over him loud were the 



20 LEA VING HOME. 

cries for mercy and vehement the promises of amend- 
ment, which he offered in every gasping interval. God 
spared him. Eventually he recovered ; and recovering, 
he returned to the old excess of riot. But though he 
forgot his own vows and prayers, his visitor could not 
forget them — the outcries of a guilty conscience shaken 
over the mouth of hell. Not only did they drive all 
thoughts of folly from his mind, but they sent him back 
to his own abode a crushed and frightened penitent. 
At last, having obtained mercy, he startled his fellow- 
townsmen by standing up in the market-place and 
urging them to flee from the wrath to come; and 
although at first scoffs and derision — yes, and angry 
missiles — were his recompense, through a long life he 
persisted snatching brands from the burning, and giving 
numbers in Banff and Moray reason to bless his solemn 
and rousing ministrations.'''^ 

More frequently it is on an honourable errand that 
the youthful pilgrim sets forth. A subsistence must be 

* The above particulars were related to us in 1840 by an "old 
disciple" in Huntly, James Maitland, who well remembered George 
Cowie, and who, we believe, was one of the fruits of his ministry. 
Describing the rough treatment given to the young evangeHst, our 
informant said — "They flung custocks at him;" and many of our 
readers will remember the old song which associates " custocks " 
(cabbage-stems) with Strathbogie. In a brief memoir it is mentioned 
that Mr. Cowie's "first alarm about his soul was occasioned by 
witnessing the death of an uncle in the year 1765" (Kinniburgh's 
Fathers of Lidependejicy in Scotland^ p. 13). Our impression is, that 
the uncle temporarily recovered. 



LEA VING HOME. 2 1 

earned, an education must be obtained, a profession has 
been chosen, a divine call is obeyed ; and so the student 
goes to college, the recruit seeks his regiment, the sailor 
joins his ship, the aspirant after an honourable independ- 
ence starts for the city or the distant colony ; and there 
is on both sides true tenderness — on the one side the 
best intention, on the other many an earnest prayer. 
'' Happy, thrice happy, as an after-remembrance, be the 
final parting between hopeful son and fearful parent, at 
the foot of that mystic bridge which starts from the 
threshold of home — lost in the dimness of the far- 
opposing shore — bridge over which goes the boy who 
shall never return but as the man/'''^ 

Blessed be God, the tearful hopes of that anxious 
moment are often fulfilled ; and happy are the parents 
who, in the frank and affectionate communications of 
their absent child, see plainly that the heart is still at 
home ; and still happier they who, after whatsoever 
interval, receive him back with new excellence developed 
or with character confirmed. To John Angell James's 
mother it was a delightful discovery when the careless 
apprentice returned to Blandford and she found a Bible 
in his great-coat pocket. A bundle of bank-notes would 
not have made her near so happy. How the eyes of 
Henry Kirke White's mother must have filled over 
these lines from her gifted son near the close of his 
Cambridge career : — " Never do I lay myself on my bed 
* Lord Lytton's What will he do with it ? vol. ii. p. 84. 



2 2 LEAVING HOME. 

before you have all passed before me in my prayers ; 
and one of my first earthly wishes is to make you com- 
fortable, and provide that rest and quiet for your mind 
which you so much need. I shall have some quiet 
parsonage, where you may come and spend the summer 
months. Maria and Kate will then be older, and you 
will be less missed." And when the bitterness of death 
was over — for even though a sword should pierce through 
the soul, blessed among women is the martyr's mother* — 
still more blessed may we deem in after-years that devout 
lady in Manchester, who, in the June of 1555, received this 
letter from her son in London, looking forward to his fiery 
chariot at Smithfield : — '' I die as a witness of Christ, his 
gospel and truth, which hitherto I have confessed as well 
by preaching as by imprisonment; and now, even pre- 
sently, I shall confirm the same by fire. I send all my 
writings to you by my brother Roger : do with them as 
you will, because I cannot as I would. I pray God to 
bless you and keep you from evil. May He give you 
patience, may He make you thankful for me and for 
yourself, that He will take your child to witness His 
verity. . . . Thus, my dear mother, I take my last 
farewell of you in this life ; beseeching the almighty and 
eternal Father, by Christ, to grant us to meet in the life 
to come, where we shall give Him continual thanks and 
praise Him for ever and ever. Out of prison, your son 
in the Lord, John Bradford." 

* Luke ii. 35 ; i. 28, 42. 



LEAVING HOME. 23 

For character there is a twofold security — the first 
commandment and the fifth — love to God and hallowed 
domestic affections : nor is that character likely to drift 
where both anchors are out, and where the heart is well 
moored both to the home on earth and the home on 
high. Reader, have you both ? Young men, scattered 
about in little companies or dwelling alone in your 
solitary lodging, have you both ? Like a good ship 
off a dangerous coast, are you keeping your heart with 
all diligence, and are both bower and sheet anchor out ? 
the bower of memory binding you to the fireside far 
away where loved ones linger ? the sheet-anchor of 
hope entering within the veil, and attaching to the 
Fathers house and the goodly fellowship assembled 
there ? Inasmuch as both homes are lost to sight, they 
are in your case things of faith; but in the storm of 
temptation, when the importunities of sense and the 
enticements of Satan are equally vehement, the only 
preservative from shipwreck is faith in the unseen — 
faithful memory or faithful hope; and when the poor 
little kedge of carnal policy comes home — when like 
a leaden fluke good humour bends, like a rotten cable 
worldly wisdom snaps in sunder — they are only God's 
anchors which continue sure and steadfast. 

To those who are still in the outset of their active 
life we offer a few further hints. They will be received 
in good part, for they are given by one who still remem- 
bers some of his own youthful feelings, and who has often 



24 LEA VING HOME, 

had reason to rejoice in the good and gallant fight of young 
men who were '' strong and overcame the wicked one." 

If you wish to have a happy and honourable career, 
you must choose the best companions. Your fellow-clerks, 
your neighbours in the shop or factory, you cannot 
choose : they are chosen for you : but it is left in your 
own option to select your friends ; and you may find it 
a great difficulty. If you were a dry, disagreeable fellow, 
people would let you alone ; but if you are worth cultivat- 
ing ; if instead of being a proser or a pedant, you have 
pleasant dispositions and a frank, popular way ; instead 
of being a silent solemn automaton, or the next thing to 
it, a man of one idea — a wooden centaur who has grown 
into the same substance with his hobby ; if you have a 
rich and varied nature ; if you have humour ; if you are 
musical ; if you are fond of athletic sports ; if you read ; if 
you row ; — every separate liking is just a several hook, a 
distinct affinity to which a kindred spirit will be apt to 
attach itself, and ere ever you are aware you may find 
yourself complicated with an acquaintanceship which, al- 
though at some point or other agreeable, is on the whole 
cumbrous or uncongenial. It is pleasant to feel that you 
are liked, and it is painful to keep at arm's length those 
who take to you and would evidently value your society. 
Nor would it be fair to call them by hard 'names. They 
are not seducers or systematic assassins, lying in wait for 
the precious soul ; and the harm they do is not so much 
from having any evil purpose as from their having no right 



LEAVING HOME. 25 

principle. Nevertheless, if a man carrying contagion pro- 
poses a visit or offers you his arm, although he intends 
no injury, you stand aloof, and you are not to be de- 
nounced as a churl for declining a danger which he does 
not realise. And in the philharmonic class or in the rifle 
corps, you are alongside of a splendid shot or an excellent 
singer, and you are not a little drawn to one another ; but 
if on nearer intercourse it turns out that he drinks too 
freely, or keeps no Sabbath, or has loose notions on 
morality — " can a man take coals into his bosom and not 
be burned ?" ** the companion of fools shall be destroyed " 
— it would not be complaisance but cowardice — it would 
be a sinful softness, which allowed affinity in taste to 
imperil your faith or your virtue. It would be the same 
sort of courtesy which in the equatorial forest, for the 
sake of its beautiful leaf, lets the liana with its strangling 
arms run up the plantain or orange, and pays the forfeit 
in blasted boughs and total ruin. It would be the same 
sort of courtesy which, for fear of appearing rude or in- 
hospitable, took into dock the infected vessel, or welcomed, 
not as a patient but a guest, the plague-stricken stranger. 
A great help is a good companion. Robert Story 
and Thomas Pringle were lads of seventeen who from 
the same pleasant Roxburghshire went up to Edinburgh 
College sixty years ago. They " lodged in the same 
rooms, where amidst the novelties of the capital they con- 
tinued to ' remember their Creator in the days of their 
youth.' They performed religious service regularly, as 



26 LEA VI NG HOME. 

they had been accustomed to see it done at home, taking 
the duty alternately. The Sabbath they kept holy, as 
they had been taught to do ; avoiding so much as open- 
ing a book on that day which was not of a directly re- 
ligious character." "^^ To the nobler attributes nothing is 
so fatal as fast living, and with the pure innocent lives 
which these young friends led It was wonderful how rich 
in romance was the rest of existence, how rich withal in 
religious feeling. That fine idealism which, added to 
faith, gives the soul two pinions and makes the subllmest 
spirits, was never broken in the case of either, and they 
could not only soar at will, but — as long as you continue 
a little child you keep the sceptre, you retain the kingdom 
of heaven — in virtue of their very unworldllness, they had 
strange ascendency over men. The one, a cripple and a 
man of letters, inspired his own family with enthusiasm 
such as clansmen used to feel for stalwart chieftain, and 
in the make-believe of his genius the South- African glen 
to which he carried them off wanted no Tweed in order to 
resemble the Border, whilst from his gentle goodness 
there fell on Bushman and Caffre a reverence and a re- 
spect for his little settlement not to be gained by the 
musket and cannon. The other we still remember with 
lustrous eyes wide open to the beauties of the landscape, 
but in his inner daily walk expatiating through scenes far 
fairer : weak in that logic in which Scotchmen are strong, 
but strong in that love and devotion without which school 
Leitch Ritchie's Memoirs of T, Pr ingle, p. xvii. 



LEAVING HOME. 27 

logic IS weak : the pastor of Roseneath, a brightly-cloudy 
pillar, transcendental and indefinite, but irradiated at 
top by a sun which to his spirit all these forty years had 
never set : with a creed not the clearest, but with a 
Christ-loving heart, moving on before his people in a 
way which made them feel that if they could only follow 
the same shining track, they too would reach the better 
land.* 

Two are better than one, and you will find it both pro- 
tection and incentive if you can secure a faithful friend ; 
and in some respects better than two are the many : 
therefore you cannot do more wisely than seek out in the 
Young Men's Society a wider companionship ; and whilst 
instructed by the information of some, and strengthened 
by the firmer faith or larger experience of others, there 
are important themes on which you will learn to think 
with precision, and in the exercise of public speaking you 
will either acquire a useful talent or will turn it to good 
account. 

You are a young man away from home. We have 
said, Choose good companions ; we must add, Beware of 
bad habits. 

* Some one called Pringle " a Scot without guile." See Seattle's 
Life of Thomas Campbell^ vol. ii. p. 56. His effort to secure "homes 
abroad" for his kinsfolk by carrying them out to South Africa is an in- 
teresting chapter in the history of emigration, and from his venerable 
widow, long an attached member of Regent Square congregation, the 
author has heard many anecdotes of lion-hunts and other incidents of 
life at Glen Lynden. 



2 8 LEAVING HOME. 

It was the third hour of the day, and Abdallah still 
lingered over the morning repast, when there came a little 
fly and alighted on the rim of his goblet. It sipped a 
particle of syrup and was gone. It came next morning, 
and the next, and the next again, till it caught the eye of 
the scholar. As he considered it, and as it gave forth its 
many colours and moved itself aright, it seemed beautiful 
exceedingly, and in his heart he could not find to drive it 
away. Wherefore it came day by day continually, and 
waxing bolder and bolder it withal became greater and 
greater, till in the size as of a locust could be perceived as 
the likeness of a man ; and the greater that it grew the 
more winning were its ways, frisking like a sunbeam, 
singing like a peri, so that the eyes of the simple one 
were blinded, and in all this he did not perceive the 
subtlety of an evil jinn. Wherefore, waxing bolder and 
yet bolder, whatsoever of dainty meats its soul desired 
the lying spirit freely took, and when, waxing wroth, the 
son of the prophet said, '' This is my daily portion from 
the table of the mufti ; there is not enough for thee and 
me;" playing one of its pleasant tricks, the brazen-faced 
deceiver caused the simple one to smile ; until in pro- 
cess of time the scholar perceived that as his guest 
waxed stronger and stronger, he himself waxed weaker 
and weaker. 

Now also there arose frequent contention between the 
demon and his dupe, and the youth smote the demon so 
sore that it departed for a season. Thereupon Abdallah 



LEA VING HOME, 29 

rejoiced exceedingly, and said, '' I have triumphed over 
mine enemy, and when it seemeth good in my sight I shall 
smite him that he die." But after not many days, lo and 
behold ! the jinn came again, arrayed in goodly garments, 
and bringing a present in its hand, and with its fair speech, 
saying, '' Is it not a little one ? " it enticed this silly dove 
so that he again received it into his chamber. 

On the morrow, when Abdallah came not into the 
assembly of studious youth, the mufti said, " Wherefore 
tarrieth the son of the faithful ? perchance he sleepeth." 
Therefore they resorted even to his chamber, and 
knocked, and lifted up their voice ; but as he made no 
answer the mufti opened the door, and behold ! on the 
divan lay the dead body of his disciple. His visage was 
black and swollen, and on his throat was the pressure of 
a finger broader than the palm of a mighty man. All the 
stuff belonging to the hapless one was gone, the gold and 
the jewels, and the parchment-rolls, and the changes of 
raiment; and in the soft earth of the garden were dis- 
cerned the footsteps of a giant. The mufti measured 
one of the prints, and lo ! it was six cubits long. 

What means the apologue ? who can expound the 
riddle? Is it the bottle or the betting-book? is it the 
billiard-table ? is it the theatre, or the tea-garden, or the 
music-saloon ? is it laziness ? is it debt ? is it the 
wasted Sunday ? But know that an evil habit is an elf 
constantly expanding. It may come in at the key-hole, 
but it will soon grow too big for the house. At first it 



30 LEA VING HOME. 

may seem too trivial for serious attack, but it will pre- 
sently prove the death of the owner. We know not that 
we can give a better commentary than the experience of! 
a citizen of Boston, whose kindly memory is still hon- 
oured in New England. Writing to a young friend, 
says Amos Lawrence : " At the commencement of your 
journey take this for your motto, that the difference of 
going just right or a little wrong will be the difference 
of finding yourself in good quarters or in a miserable 
bog or slough at the end of it. Of the whole number 
educated in the Groton stores for some years before and 
after myself, no one else, to my knowledge, escaped the 
bog or slough ; and my escape I trace to the simple fact of 
my having put a restraint upon my appetite. We five boys 
were in the habit, every forenoon, of making a drink 
compounded of rum, raisins, etc., with biscuit — all palat- 
able to eat and drink. After being in the store four 
weeks I found myself admonished by my appetite of the 
approach of the hour for indulgence. Thinking the 
habit might make trouble if allowed to grow stronger, 
without further apology to my seniors I declined partak- 
ing with them. My first resolution was to abstain for a 
week, and, when the week was out, for a month, and 
then for a year. Finally, I resolved to abstain for the 
rest of my apprenticeship, which was for five years 
longer. During that whole period I never drank a 
spoonful, though I mixed gallons daily for my old master 
and his customers. I decided not to be a slave to to- 



LEA VING HOME. 3 1 

bacco in any form, though I loved the odour of it then, 
and even now have in my drawer a superior Havannah 
cigar, given me not long since by a friend, but only to 
smell at. I have never in my life smoked a cigar ; never 
chewed but one quid, and that was before I was fifteen ; 
and never took an ounce of snuff, though the scented 
rappee of forty years ago had great charms for me. 
Now, I say to this simple fact of starting /W^ right, am I 
indebted, with God's blessing on my labours, for my pre- 
sent position, as well as that of the numerous connections 
sprung up around me."* 

It is of vast moment to be ''just right" when starting. 
At Preston, at Malines, at many such places, the lines go 
gently asunder ; so fine is the angle that at first the 
paths are almost parallel, and it seems of small moment 
which you select. But a little farther on one of them 
turns a corner or dives into a tunnel, and now that the 
speed is full the angle opens up, and at the rate of a mile 
a minute the divided convoy flies asunder : one pas- 
senger is on the way to Italy, another to the swamps of 
Holland ; one will step out in London, the other in the 
Irish Channel. It is not enough that you book for the 
better country : you must keep the way, and a small 
deviation may send you entirely wrong. A slight de- 
flection from honesty, a slight divergence from perfect 
truthfulness, from perfect sobriety, may throw you on a 
wrong track altogether, and make a failure of that life 

* Diary and Correspondence of Amos Lawrence, Boston, p. 10. 



32 LEAVING HOME. 

which should have proved a comfort to your family, a 
credit to your country, a blessing to mankind. 

Beware of the bad habit. It makes its first appear- 
ance as a tiny fay, and is so innocent, so playful, so 
minute, that none save a precisian would denounce it, and 
it seems hardly worth while to whisk it away. The trick 
is a good joke, the lie is white, the glass is harmless, the 
theft is only a few apples from a farmer s orchard, the 
bet is only sixpence, the debt is only half-a-crown. But 
the tiny fay is capable of becoming a tremendous giant ; 
and if you connive and harbour him, he will nourish him- 
self at your expense, and then, springing on you as an 
armed man, will drag you down to destruction. 



THE FAR COUNTRY. 



D 



" A certain man had two sons : and the younger of them said to his father, Father, 
give me the portion of goods that falleth to me. And he divided unto them his 
living. And not many days after, the younger son gathered all together, and took 
his journey into a far country, and there wasted his substance with riotous living," 
— Luke xv. 11-13. 




THE YOUNGER SON GATHERED ALL TOGETHER, AND TOOK HIS JOURNEY 
INTO A FAR COUNI^RY. 



THE FAR COUNTRY. 



As it rises up to our imagination, there was once a 
pleasant home presided over by a kind and wealthy 
householder. Two sons grew up in it. The oldest was 
sedate and prudent; so correct and proper that he sel- 
dom got into any trouble, and was always well pleased 
with himself. But we should not wonder though the 
younger was more popular. Not near so diligent, he 
had a fine flow of spirit, and with his sallies of fancy and 
his frank hearty ways, we can believe that he was his 
mother s favourite, and that when he turned up among 
the labourers in the harvest-field, his coming would be 
the signal for shouts and merriment. 

Fancy is a famous inmate, but singing out of doors 
she becomes a dangerous decoy. Precious beyond rubies 
is the idealism which can invest with celestial dignity 
the earthly avocation, and which, even when the hands 
are engaged in downright drudgery, can fill the mind with 
noble thoughts, and carry you through the daily task as 
a son or daughter of the king ; but very perilous is this 
same power when, instead of dignifying duty and bring- 



36 THE FAR COUNTRY, 

ing heaven into the home, she becomes the syren, and, 
flying out at the window, sings on the distant hill or far 
off at sea, luring you away from the solid land or the 
sober threshold. 

So was it with the younger son. The father's house 
grew tame. To be doing the same things over and over 
again, day after day, was very tiresome. He would like 
more liberty ; he would like to see the world. Tush ! 
why talk of danger ? That is the way old people always 
do ; but he is out of leading-strings. He is no longer a 
baby. He is come of age, and can take care of himself : 
and what is more, he is his own master, and entitled to 
do as he pleases. And so^ with the song of the charmer 
hardening his heart against every delicate or duteous 
consideration, practically avowing that home has lost its 
attractions, and that he does not mean to waste any more 
years " serving his father," he goes up and demands his 
inheritance. " Father, give me the portion of goods 
that falleth to me." Nor does it appear that the father 
refused. Man is a free agent. If Gabriel will not con- 
tinue in heaven as a son, he shall not be detained as a 
slave ; and when Gabriel's younger brother, Adam, 
wearied of obedience, wished to set up for himself, " the 
portion of goods which fell to him" he was allowed to 
take with him — those bodily organs, those senses, those 
intellectual and moral endowments, which in Eden were 
an inexhaustible fortune, but which in the '' far country" 
go but a little way. 



THE FAR COUNTRY. 37 

A few days intervened. For converting into gold 
and gems his goods and chattels, so as to make them 
portable, some little delay was needful ; nor does the bird 
always take wing the Instant the cage is opened. As he 
was getting his own way, he would take his own time ; 
and as he was free to set off when he pleased, he did not 
need to be anxious or hurried. 

At last it arrived, the much-wished-for morning. No 
mention is made of any tender leave-taking ; for when a 
man becomes a lover of pleasure his affections get 
utterly blunted. The tears of a mother are troublesome. 
He would rather that people would not make so much 
ado, but show a little more sense. And so, without a 
word of thanks to his father, without any keepsake to his 
old companions, he hied away on the eventful journey. 

Do you not see him ? Healthy and handsome, and 
flushed with hope, he trips along gaily. With pearls 
and rubies in his purse, and such a load of coin in his 
girdle, who could be richer ? And as up its south- 
eastern portal he presses into the sunland, life swims 
before him a vision of glory, a romance of ever- varying 
ecstasy. Tasks are over ; care is left behind ; the swallow 
in its lofty sweep is not more free ; the butterfly, tipsy 
with nectar and dozing on the acacia blooms, is not more 
happy. O life, life ! What a sensation is the fresh feel 
of existence ! It Is dull work to walk. He must jump 
for joy. He must run up the steep places. He must 
shout to the jerboas and the conies, and send them 



38 THE FAR COUNTRY, 

helter-skelter to their holes. In merry mischief he must 
chase the wild hog and her squealing litter till they 
reach their refuge in the reeds or the jungle ; and in 
mad freaks and frolicsome escapades he flings away 

" The prodigal excess i 

Of too familiar happiness." 

Till now, he is in a new land. It seems all garden. 
Palms are plentiful, and orange-trees, with rich exotic 
scent and golden apples. And the houses are so hand- 
some ! For vastitude and for amazing antiquity, even 
the holy and beautiful house at Jerusalem yields to those 
temples. And then, this glorious river ! With balm 
above, and reflecting the spotless blue, it seems to carry 
in solution all the ages which have wandered by its 
brink, and all the shadows which have dropped into its 
tide — sphinxes, pyramids, palaces. And as the lotus 
lifts its chalice to the light, whilst the crocodile lurks 
below ; as from its far-off source it suddenly arrives, with 
bounty in its bosom and sunshine on its face, but with a 
dark secret in its heart, and then holds on its way, most 
ancient of rivers and most mysterious, — at once an 
emblem of human life, an epitome of human history, — we 
know the fascination it exerts on many a pilgrim of our 
modern time. Like a liquid spell, a floating poem — as 
you surrender to its sorcery, your inch of duration 
expands into epochs, and into your own life you take up 
the thousands of years preserved in these changeless 



THE FAR COUNTRY. 39 

monuments. Aching nerves soothed, chafed lungs com- 
forted, it feels as if every furlong that you float bore you 
farther and farther from all that is dangerous in disease 
and from all that is painful in the past. And with sen- 
sations so novel, — with existence made so easy, — you 
not only forget your father's house and your own people, 
but you forget the frailty of your frame. In self- 
complacent catholicity you become tolerant of strange 
customs and strange creeds ; and it is well if, amid the 
pleasant witchery, you remember the deceitfulness of sin, 
and retain in sharp demarcation the rules and restrictions 
of the Decalogue. 

Even had the wanderer been a man of faith and 
fixed principle, there are temptations in travel ; and away 
from wonted influences and restraints, it needs special 
watchfulness and prayer, — it needs the special grace of 
God, — to keep the way of holiness. In his Egyptian 
journey even the faith of Abraham faltered ; and 
although his pious errand may protect the evangelist, 
and his grave pursuit may be some help to the explorer 
or the trader, novel scenes and foreign ways are a great 
trial to the tourist. His errand is relaxation, amusement, 
unbending ; and in order to bring back a clear con- 
science and a purer piety, as well as health and spirits, 
he would need to remember everywhere, '* Thou, God, 
seest me." And after all, of the traveller s reminiscences 
the most delightful are Bethel and the seaside at Troas, 
spots consecrated by the communion of saints and fellow- 



40 THE FAR COUNTRY. 

ship in prayer — made memorable by the nearness of 
Heaven and ghmpses of the glory of God ; or places 
like the road from Jerusalem to Gaza, or the river- 
side at Philippi, where strangers were drifted together, 
and a passage of Scripture was read, or a conversa- 
tion ensued, which made it on either side an interview 
much to be remembered. 

Our traveller, unfortunately, had no good errand. 
He merely wanted to enjoy life and see the world, and 
be sufficiently far from home. And we have fancied 
him come down into Egypt. Notwithstanding its cruel 
treatment of his ancestors, this country was still attrac- 
tive to the Jew, and it sufficiently meets the requirements 
of the parable. Beautified by the Greek and enriched 
by the Roman, the old colossal Egypt of the Pharaohs 
had ceased to be formidable, and many a Hebrew found 
his way to such a city as Alexandria, — the merchant to 
make his fortune, the scholar to study in its matchless 
library, the spendthrift to command its luxuries and enjoy 
its pleasures. 

In the mood of our adventurer, a city of this descrip- 
tion was sure to be fatal. In the countryside where he 
grew up, if there was wickedness, it carried its own 
warning. The sot was notorious and was shunned ; 
there was no field for sharpers and swindlers ; if there 
had been detected any open sepulchre, with his evil 
communication corrupting the atmosphere, the nuisance 
would have been quickly ejected from the neighbour- 



THE FAR COUNTRY. 41 

hood, — the scurrilous foul-mouthed scoundrel would have 
been cast forth from all decent company ; and by 
stamping vice with the brand of villany, society not only 
vindicated God's law, but preserved itself from many 
snares and sorrows. 

Here, however, it is all so different. Everything is 
elegant, and at first it is enjoyment sufficient to view the 
mighty piles of masonry, — the obelisks and colonnades, the 
public walks and fountains ; and as he visits the bazaars, 
brilliant with the manufactures of three continents, or 
goes down to the wharf where bee-laden barges and 
floating granaries are coming in, the bustle and the Babel 
noises are a stirring contrast to the stupid life at home. 
Presently, however, the eye is satisfied with seeing, and 
in quest of refreshment he steps in where food and wine 
are sold. Prepossessed by the size of his girdle, a stranger 
enters into conversation with him. The stranger is very 
gentlemanly, and he must be wonderfully accomplished ; 
for he can speak Hebrew as well as Greek and the 
n2itvjQ patois. Nothing can be more affable; and although 
his entire air is distinguished — so distinguished that his 
fine clothes, contrasting with a country suit, bring the 
blush into our young friend's face, and make him feel like 
a bumpkin and a boor — he condescends, when asked, to 
share the flask of wine, and enters with kindest interest 
into the affairs of the new-comer. The result is an agree- 
able acquaintance, who undertakes to show him some- 
thing of the town, and who introduces him to a nice set 



42 THE FAR COUNTRY, 

of friends. They welcome to their society the simpleton 
with his store of silver pieces. They see that he is, 
according to our vulgar vocabulary, very '* fast " and very 
*' green." Fond of display, they flatter him, and feast at 
his expense right royally ; and not disinclined to dissipa- 
tion, they lead him on to all evil, even as he is able to bear 
it; till taverns and theatres, music halls and midnight 
orgies, are his familiar resort, and in the excess of riot he 
outruns his tamer or more cautious companions. 

We said when principle is weak the "far country" is 
fatal. It was the loss of this young runaway that he had 
now arrived where there were few restraints on evil, 
fewer helps to religion : no Sabbath, no public worship, 
no stated reading of the Word of God. Even though 
there might be many of his compatriots in the place, he did 
not seek them out. He had no wish to fall in with them ; 
he rather studied to keep out of their way ; and so, as 
long as money lasted and comrades cheered, with 
equanimity unruffled and conscience unaroused, he kept 
up the revel, waxing wilder and wilder, worse and worse. 

If any one is obliged to leave home — not from love 
of idleness, not from love of liberty, not from love of 
pleasure — but on such business as to our large towns 
brings young men every day — on virtuous errands and 
with honourable aspirations — willing to work their own 
way and lighten the load of others — do not forget that God 
is here. It would be true if you were the only occupant 
of earth : it is no less true of you as a unit in the million- 



THE FAR COUNTRY, 45 

peopled city : '' O Lord, thou knowest my downsltting 
and mine uprising ; thou understandest my thought afar 
off; thou compasseth my path and my lying down, and art 
acquainted with all my ways." But in order that you 
may be in the fear of God all the day long, you must 
avoid those whose frivolity dissipates thought, as well as 
those whose evil courses make it their interest to forget 
God's presence or deny His power. Seek out for your 
companions the high-toned, the pure-minded, the Christian; 
and if occasionally sighing for " the calm retreat, the 
silent shade," remember what a holy life was lived by 
Daniel in Babylon ; remember that at Rome, In Rome's 
worst days, there were found friends of Jesus, and in the 
palace of the worst of emperors — *' saints in Caesar's 
household." Remember, too, that a thing does not be- 
come right when it ceases to be repulsive. No doubt 
that was a snare to the prodigal. In the far country vice 
was disguised as much as possible, and looked quite 
another thing in the garb of fashion. So if over their 
greasy cards you chanced to see a set of low ruffians quar- 
relling — the fiend in every face and blasphemy on every 
tongue — you might recall what your grandmother used to 
say about the devil's books, and almost vow that you 
would never touch them. But go into the Kur-Saal at 
Homburg or Baden — a palace in the midst of a garden — 
and in glittering saloons with magnificent music, for which 
you 'pay nothing, see Satan enthroned as an angel of 
light. They are ladies and gentlemen all : every move- 



44 THE FAR COUNTRY. 

ment soft and silken, and nothing to interrupt the well 
bred silence, except the ivory ball revolving, and the chink 
of gold and silver, as happy winners garner their 
harvest of napoleons or florins. Surely amidst these 
mountains of money there is enough for all, and if it was 
very wrong the people could not look so respectable. 
Yet, after all, it is only the tuneful Lorelei seeking to 
draw down into her gloomy gulf the simple voyager 
These tranquil countenances and soft movements are but 
a masque, a veil, a curtain ; and behind — within — as any 
one can tell who has been there, are bankruptcy and 
suicide, fraud, peculation, forgery — deserted wives and 
children cast upon the world — magnificent domains brought 
to the hammer — and ever and anon a murder. So in our 
large cities there is a sort of gambling which does not 
look particularly repulsive ; for it is not carried on in 
** hells," and it pleads the sanction of some titled names ; 
and yet its results are hanging like a millstone round the 
neck of many a once promising young man, and, to say 
nothing of those whom it has reduced to beggary or 
blackguardism, numbers of its victims must be sought in 
the Portland hulks or Dartmoor prison. They went to the 
race-course, or, without going there, they laid wagers on 
horses, and sooner or later they lost more than they could 
pay, and in dread of dishonour they took means to get 
the money at the very suggestion of which, once upon a 
time, they would indignantly have exclaimed, "Is thy 
servant a dog?" and after a few miserable make-shifts. 



THE FAR COUNTRY. 45 

only adding sin to sin, there came detection, and ruin, 
and disgrace. Reader, you will be a wise and happy 
man if you resolve in the strength of God never to lay a 
wager, and never to play for money. If you would keep 
the devil at arm's length you will never enter a billiard- 
room, and the betting-book is a record in which your 
name will never appear. 

The time of a young man's arrival in London is a 
time of trial ; but those who have the prudence or the 
principle to resist the temptations of the outset are 
usually preserved to the end. 

On a wintry day in 1803 a lad left his native Kelso 
so sad at heart that, as he stood that night on the bridge 
at Berwick, the tear had almost frozen on his cheek. It 
was his eighteenth birthday when he found himself for 
the first time in our great labyrinth, and on one of the 
first evenings after his arrival a youth, who from the same 
vicinity had gone up to town the previous year, took 
him out to see the sights. The stroll ended in a sort of 
blind alley, and as his companion knocked at a door it 
was opened by some light-looking girls evidently well 
acquainted with their visitor. With instant revulsion the 
new-comer started back, for instinctively he felt that it 
was " the house which inclineth unto death." In much 

agitation he exclaimed, " O , where are you going ?" 

and he entreated his companion to come away. That com- 
panion only laughed and went in, and as our friend sought 
his way back to his lodging he felt very desolate. It was 



46 THE FAR COUNTRY, 

a cold and dreary night, and In his disheartened mood 
he thought that London must be a devouring mon- 
ster which swallowed up whatever came into it, and 
changed it into the likeness of its own deformity. Here 
in a few months it had made a virtuous youth a pro- 
fligate, and as if walking amidst snares and pitfalls and 
strange mysteries of iniquity, he trembled for himself. 
The whole thing was too painful for him, till he went 
into the sanctuary. But next Sabbath he inquired his 
way to Swallow Street. There he found the worship 
which he had learned to love beyond the Border, and as 
he listened to the earnest sermon he began to feel, " God 
is In this place." The little church brightened into a 
Bethel, and helped to cheer the following week ; and then 
came an Introduction to the minister, and a class in the 
Sunday-school, and the acquisition of one good friend 
after another ; till at last the streets which at his first 
arrival were haunted by gloomy phantoms and cruel 
ghosts, grew populous with brethren In the Lord : till he 
who had himself been so graciously preserved became 
distinguished for his efforts in preserving and strengthen- 
ing younger brethren. 

It was on the fiftieth anniversary of that eventful 
day that our venerable friend, his heart overflov/ing with 
gratitude to God, told us this incident. By that time he 
was an honoured citizen, and his name well known 
throughout the churches. Numbers of ministers and 
missionaries knew him. Many widows and orphans knew 



THE FAR COUNTRY, 47 

him. Nearly all our religious societies and benevolent 
institutions knew James Nisbet. 

Under God, that trying evening was the pivot on which 
turned the whole of his following history. If he had for 
a moment yielded — if through curiosity or weakness he 
had accompanied his guide across the sinful threshold, he 
might have shared the same fate, and in a few months, 
with ruined health and morals, been, like him, sent back 
to his native place a shattered dying invalid. And un- 
feignedly do w^e congratulate all to whom God and a 
careful up-bringing have given the same blessed and self- 
protecting purity. It is a pearl of great price ; may it 
never be flawed or sullied ! And you to whom life in 
the city is new, pray to God to '* turn away your eyes 
from beholding vanity," and may He enable you to follow 
their shining track who through the same scenes passed 
undefiled, and who now walk with Christ in white among 
the worthy ! 

You too, kind friends, to whom God has given a 
pleasant habitation, extend its shelter to the young and 
inexperienced. There are some who make a system 
of this, and many who in various professions are now 
treading the paths of righteousness look back with grati- 
tude to those whose timely thoughtfulness invited them 
to the family pew, or on the Lord's day evening offered 
them the hospitalities of a Christian home. It is a labour 
of love which almost any head of a household can render. 
It were a fitting acknowledgment to Him who, when the 



48 THE FAR COUNTRY. 

path was slippery, upheld yourself; and few efforts are 
more like the Saviour Himself than the endeavour to 
strengthen weak principle and protect endangered virtue. 
It is by fostering the smoking flax that Christ has created 
all the lights of the world. 

Returning to the prodigal : the portion of goods which 
fell to him must have been a handsome patrimony, and it 
would have been his wisdom to wait for it till the proper 
time. In that case, before entering on the actual posses- 
sion, he would have known how to guide it. He would 
have learned how to make it more by trading, and he 
would have learned some temperance and self-control. 
But with indecent haste he forestalled his reversion, and 
what he obtained so easily he quickly fooled away. No 
trinket or toy could he see but his fingers itched till he 
owned it, and though it had only been in costly jewels 
and fashionable attire, a short period would have disposed 
of it all. But then there was the riotous living. The 
daily bread costs little ; but dainties are dear, and are 
never so costly as when they are gifts from the devil. 
His comrades treated him, and in return he must needs 
treat them ; and if over exquisite viands and the vintages 
of distant lands the time flew fast, the money flew faster : 
till all of a sudden the horse-leeches dropped off", the 
parasites disappeared ; the victim was exhausted, his 
'' substance" was gone. 



RIOTOUS LIVING 



The younger son . . , took his journey into a far country, and there wasted 
his substance with riotous hving." — Luke xv. 13. 




THE YOUNGER SON TOOK HIS JOURNEY INTO A FAR COUNTRY, 

AND THERE WASTED HIS SUBSTANCE WITH RIOTOUS LIVING. 



RIOTOUS LIVING. 



Nothing can be nobler than a true and thorough man- 
hood, where, amid the seductions of sense, the soul still 
retains the mastery of itself by retaining its loyalty to 
God. Such men are always impressive : men like Blake, 
content with the softest plank for a pillow ; men like 
Havelock, who, never thinking of comfort, never lost 
sight of duty ; men like Grimshaw, who, with meat to eat 
that others knew not, would dine on a crust of bread, 
then preaching the love of Jesus till the tears ploughed 
white channels in the grimy faces of the Yorkshire colliers, 
would turn into his hay-loft and find it Eden in his dreams ; 
men like Milton, of maidenly purity of heart and heroic 
grandeur of purpose, " himself a true poem, that is, a 
composition of the best and honourablest things," and 
flowing forth accordingly in the stately song which still 
ennobles English literature ; men like Paul, who, '' keep- 
ing the body under, and bringing it into subjection," was 
enabled to bring myriads in subjection to the Saviour, 
and perform those prodigies of daring and devotion at 
which the world will wonder evermore. 

Such men command our homage. For the moment 



52 RIOTOUS LIVING. 

we forget that they are of like passions with ourselves, 
and they give us a new and exalted conception of what 
human nature can perform when sustained by high motive 
and animated by the Spirit of God. 

On the other hand, it is deeply distressing to find the 
higher nature dethroned or in thraldom. Wild stories 
circulate in many lands. In Northern Europe they tell 
how a child has been carried off by wolves, and brought 
up amongst them — taught to live in wolfish fashion, sleep- 
ing in the forest, joining in the hunt of the reindeer or 
aurochs, and drinking with savage delight the blood of 
the palpitating prey. And in Africa the like story is told 
— how the man has been kidnapped by the baboon, and, 
hurried up the mountain, has spent amidst these hideous 
monsters a horrible captivity. 

The risk is real. The climate may be good, the 
settlement may promise all that heart can wish, and the 
vicinity may be so far cleared as to make the immediate 
homestead tolerably secure ; but it is folly to deny all 
danger. A wise man will be cautious ; and if cautious he 
need not be nervous. It is only right and kind to give 
warning ; and pleasant as is the lot of your inheritance, 
it is well to remember that the thickets and steep places 
are haunted. Frightful ogres frequent them, and they 
are sure to sally forth on the heedless wanderer. There 
are even instances on record where they have vaulted over 
the enclosure and carried off from the threshold some 
hapless victim. The names of three of the best known 



RIOTOUS LIVING. 53 

and most mischievous are — the Lust of the Eye, the 
Lust of the Flesh, and the Pride of Life ; or, as they are 
sometimes called, Vanity, or the Love of Display ; Sen- 
suality, or the Love of Low Pleasure ; and the Affectation 
of Fashion, or the Keeping-up of Appearances. 

As long as the younger son remained at home he was 
comparatively safe ; but the far country was the native 
land of these monsters. There was no patrol to keep 
them down, no reward was offered for their destruction, 
and being thoroughly bold and fearless, they came down 
into the streets and gardens ; and this poor senseless 
youth was soon seized hold of and carried captive at their 
will. 

A hateful sight it is to see the man the slave, the 
brute the master. At first there may be some disgust, 
some effort to escape, some feeble, impotent resistance ; 
but too often it ends in the utter degradation of the 
higher nature and the brutalising of the man. The old 
fables come true. The voluptuary becomes a satyr ; the 
sybarite, the toper, and glutton are transmuted into 
swine. 

For a hundred years England has yielded no scholar 
comparable to Richard Porson. With a memory in 
which words and things were alike imperishable, and 
with that marvellous intuition which enabled him to 
personate any author, Greek or Roman, and in the 
broken parchment or faded manuscript at once perceive 
what ^schylus or Tacitus had meant to say, he had 



54 RIOTOUS LIVING, 

withal a wit which made him welcome at the board of 
rich and clever men ; and to feed the wit he plied the 
wine, till in floods of liquor wit and wisdom both were 
drowned, and, the remains of the scholar buried in mere 
beastliness, the sot disappeared from society. For a 
hundred years Ireland has yielded no dramatist, no 
orator, equal to Richard Brinsley Sheridan ; but even for 
that brilliant genius, whose versatile talents brought 
London to his feet and carried captive the senate, strong 
drink was too powerful, and, in place of bouquets and 
ribbons, with writs and executions showering around 
him, he lay on his desolate couch bankrupt in character 
as well as in fortune, and would have been carried off in 
his blankets to the debtor's gaol had not the apparitor of 
a mightier tribunal stepped in before the sheriff's officer 
and claimed the prisoner. For a hundred years — nay, 
through all the years — Scotland has yielded no poet who 
could seize the heart of the nation as it was seized by 
Robert Burns — master alike of its pathos, humour, 
chivalry. Alas ! that pinions capable of such a flight as 
" Bruce at Bannockburn'' and " Mary in Heaven," should 
have come down to get smeared and bird-limed on the 
tapster s bough ; alas ! that from the Cottar's Saturday 
evening he should have passed away to the companion- 
ship of drunken ploughboys and coarse bullies in their 
night-long carousals in low taverns. But so it was ; and, 
standing by the untimely grave of the Scottish minstrel, 
truth and tenderness can only say — 



RIOTOUS LIVING. 55 

" What bird in beauty, flight, or song. 
Can with the bard compare. 
Who sang as sweet and soar'd as strong 
As ever child of air % 

" Oh ! had he never stoop'd to shame 
Nor lent a charm to vice, 
How had Devotion loved to name 
That Bird of Paradise!""^ 

Wine Is a mocker ; strong drink is raging. Like the 
skulls which a savage carries at his girdle or sets up on 
poles in his palace-yard, and tells the traveller what a 
mighty warrior this or the other was till his axe or arrow 
laid him low ; so, of all the sins, Intemperance is the one 
which, reaped from the ranks of British genius, boasts 
the most crowded row of ghastly trophies. To say 
nothing of the many sorely wounded, amongst the ac- 
tually slain it numbers the musician and the artist, the 
philosopher and the poet, the physician and the lawyer, 
the statesman, the preacher, the judge. As we hinted 
already, for the greater part it gains its advantage by 
beginning so early and in a guise so little formidable. 
In elfin minuteness it enters the student's parlour or even 
the school-room dormitory, and the champagne breakfast 
or the furtive wine-party lays the foundation of a life- 
long sorrow. Like the spear some ten or twelve fathoms 
long with which the Vancouver Indian ploughs the river- 
bed, and the barbed point comes off In the first great 

* James Montgomery. 



56 RIOTOUS LIVING. 

sturgeon which it pierces, the tenacious fibre uncoiling as 
he flies : so, paddHng over the surface of society, it is with 
a long shaft that the demon of Drunkenness explores for 
his victims ; but when one of his barbs gets fairly 
through the mail it usually fixes and is fast. The line is 
a long one, and will hold for years. It marks the victim ; 
and the first time he rises another dart strikes through 
his liver, and then another, and at last a great many : — 
the social glass leading on to the glass suggestive or the 
glass inspiring, and the glass restorative leading on to 
the glass strength-giving, and that again to glasses fast 
and frequent, — glasses care-drowning, conscience-coaxing, 
grief-dispelling, — till, gasping and dying, the hulk is towed 
ashore, and pierced through with many sins, weak, wasted, 
worthless, the victim gives up the ghost, leaving in the 
tainted air a disastrous memory. 

Whether coarse or refined, riot speedily wastes the 
reveller s ** substance." Not only does it sap the consti- 
tution, and soften the brain, and shatter the nerves, and 
enfeeble the mind, but it exhausts the estate, and soon 
brings the spendthrift to poverty. And if the passion 
still urge and the fear of God has departed, wild methods 
will be tried to meet the demand and assuage the frantic 
craving. Keepsakes will be sold or pledged, to part 
with which would once on a time have looked like sacri- 
lege. Money will be borrowed as long as any one will 
lend it, and then it will be taken from the till, or inter- 
cepted on the way from a customer or correspondent ; 



RIOTOUS LIVING, 57 

and thus — it is a tale a thousand times told — dissipation 
leads on to dishonesty ; and in keeping up the jovial 
life, nay, in merely keeping up appearances, character 
will be vilely cast away. 

On a Saturday morning in July 1850 two inquests 
were held in Newgate. One suicide was a pugilist, who, 
on the previous day, had been sentenced to die as a 
murderer ; the other was an insurance clerk, who had, on 
the same day, been adjudged to ten years' penal servi- 
tude. His name we need not recal ; but it is well to 
know his story. As a clerk, he had a salary of ^200 
a-year, but he had tastes for the gratification of which 
two hundred a-year was a trifle. Fond of the theatre, it 
became the height of his ambition to be personally 
acquainted with those glorious creatures who on the 
stage personate kings and queens, and he was greatly 
flattered when some of them accepted his invitation, and 
partook at his expense of a costly supper. The experi- 
ment was so successful that it was soon repeated ; but in 
entertaining actors and actresses no actor of them all was 
sustaining a part so arduous as his own. He was too 
illiterate to be a judge of plays, but in such cases the 
want of scholarship is readily forgiven to a wealthy man. 
And it was for a wealthy man that this patron of the 
drama needs must pass, and with infinite effort — effort 
compared with which the tight-rope is pastime — for six 
years he kept up the illusion. His equipage in Hyde 
Park so elegant, his suburban villa so splendidly furnished, 



58 RIOTOUS LIVING. 

giving by turns a quiet dijeuner or a sumptuous banquet, 
he was applauded as a fine open-handed fellow, and was 
envied, as a man is apt to be envied who is made up of 
money. But when the truth came out and he was pro- 
claimed a swindler and a thief, his poor dastard spirit 
could not survive the degradation ; and after such a 
taste of luxury, what a prospect ten years of prison 
fare and servile drudgery ! The profligate was caught, 
but the prodigal did not come to himself; and so from 
within those gloomy walls, in the same short summer 
night fled by the same guilty exit spirits twain — the 
blood-stained murderer, and the man who, by false appear- 
ances, and for the praise of fools, had doubly destroyed 
himself''^ 

On a winter morning in 1856 — a Sunday morning — 
a friend of ours, a physician, was sent for to the Hamp- 
stead work-house. It was to view a lifeless body which 
had been just picked up in the neighbourhood of a pond, 
and which there was no difficulty in identifying. A 
member of Parliament, once a junior Lord of the Trea- 
sury, a chairman of banks ; able, influential, successful, 
what could be wanting ? what could go wrong ? The 
great wants were integrity, openness, truth : and the 
thing which put him all wrong was the pride of life, and 
the consequent need to keep up a hollow appearance. 
For this he forged documents and issued false shares, 
and embezzled funds to the extent of hundreds of thou- 
* Facts ^ Failures^ and Frauds^ by D. Morier Evans, pp. 74-105. 



RIOTOUS LIVING. 59 

sands of pounds ; and when opium could no longer dull 
the corrodings of conscience, and the evil day was im- 
minent, he wrote to a friend : '' Dear Robert, — To what 
infamy have I come, step by step, heaping crime upon 
crime ! and now I find myself the author of numberless 
crimes of a diabolical character, and the cause of ruin and 
misery to thousands. O how I feel for those on whom 
this ruin must fall. I could bear all punishments, but I 
could never bear to witness the sufferings of those on 
whom I have brought such ruin. It must be better that 
I should not live. O that I had never quitted Ireland ! 
O that I had resisted the first attempts to launch into 
speculations ! If I had had less talents of a worthless 
kind and more firmness, I might have remained as I once 
was, honest and truthful, and I would have lived to see 
my dear father and mother in their old age. I weep and 
weep now, but what can that avail ?" Then putting a 
bottle of poison into one pocket and the silver cream-jug 
into the other, as soon as the streets were quiet he rose 
from his lonely tea-table, and from the warm well-carpeted 
room in Gloucester Terrace walked forth into the cold 
February midnight. Carrying his load of guilty memories 
he climbed the hill to Hampstead Heath, and passing the 
darkened houses where, their week's work done, the 
honest trader and the day-labourer slept securely, he 
sought the spot where the largest and most successful of 
swindlers was to lay down the burden of a life no longer 
bearable, and add another commentary to the ancient 



6o RIOTOUS LIVING. 

texts, " The way of transgressors is hard. Happy is the 
man that feareth alway." 

Our hearts are weak, and we have continual need 
to pray, "Deliver us from evil;" for temptations are 
sometimes terrible. When in front of his own cathedral 
Bishop Hooper was fastened to the stake and the fire 
was slowly burning, they held up a pardon, and told 
him that he had only to say the word and walk at 
liberty. "If you love my soul, away with it !" was the 
exclamation of the martyr as every tortured fibre called 
for pity, but the loyal spirit revolted from the wicked- 
ness. So there may come a fiery trial where the ad- 
versary has got in pledge your income, your earthly 
prospects, your parents or your children, and asks 
if you will be so infatuated as to cast them away 
when the stroke of a pen, the pronouncing of a word, a 
nod or sign would suffice and save the whole. When the 
furnace is thus seven-times heated it will need much grace 
in view of the proffered bribe to cry, " Away with it ! " 
and yet, through His timely succour, who, in the days of 
His flesh and in view of an awful alternative, poured forth 
strong crying and tears, such ordeals have been en- 
countered by men of like passions with ourselves, and 
from this lesser Gethsemane they have emerged with 
spirit softened and character confirmed, enriched by the 
loss, perfected by the suffering. 

However, it was not by a roaring lion, but by a 
plausible tempter that man was first led into evil ; and 



RIOTOUS LIVING, 6i 

our greatest danger arises from the subtlety of Satan 
and the pleasures of sin. 

" I've heard that poison-sprinkled flowers 

Are sweeter in perfume 
Than when, untouched by deadly dew, 

They opened in their bloom. 
I've heard that with the witches' song, 

Though harsh and rude it be, 
There blends a wild mysterious strain 

Of weirdest harmony ; 
So that the list'ner far away 

Must needs approach the ring, 
Where, on the savage Lapland moors, 

The demon chorus sing. 
And I believe the devil's voice 

Sinks deeper in the ear 
Than any whispers sent from Heaven, 

However soft and clear."* 

Gratuitous wickedness is rare ; nor is it by a single 
bound or stride that eminence in evil is attained. In 
doing wrong the transgressor usually fancies that 
there is an absolute necessity : he cannot help himself : 
the end justifies the means: and when once the poisoned 
perfume is inhaled, when once the " weird harmony" has 
beguiled the sense — that is, after the first false step has 
been taken — the devil suggests, " In for a penny, in for a 
pound. The money will never be missed. Nothing 
venture, nothing win." Or in conjunctures more horrible 
still, and when there seems only one way to cancel the 
debt or conceal the delinquency, he whispers, " Dead 
* Aytoun's Bothwell. 



62 RIOTOUS LIVING. 

men tell no tales ;" and now that the last of fifty steps, all 
wrong, but all seemingly inevitable, has proved a plunge 
into the abyss, the evildoer wakes up with blood on his 
hands, with a ghastly crime on his conscience, with the 
sting of the never-dying worm in his bosom. 

If you would pass innocently through a difficult 
world, keep within the rules. Let your life be open, 
your eye single, your walk in the broad light of day. If 
a mistake is committed, lose no time in acknowledging 
it ; and beware of getting complicated with unprincipled 
or low-minded companions. They will be sure to use 
you as the cloak or the catspaw of their own designs, 
and then, when their purpose is served, or when the day 
of disclosure arrives, they will sacrifice you and save 
themselves. 

Keep within the homestead. If compelled to quit 
the parental roof, cast yourself all the rather on your 
Heavenly Father's grace and guidance. And do not 
forsake the sanctuary. Many years ago we remember a 
fine youth who from the far north came up to be a clerk 
in the Post Office. For a long time he was constant in 
his attendance on the means of grace, and retained his 
amiable hopeful dispositions. But by-and-by his visits 
to the house of God became desultory ; and not only did 
he disappear from the church, but he became shy of our 
own society. Years passed without seeing him, and 
then we were asked to visit him at the Old Bailey. It 
turned out that he had fallen in with careless acquaint- 



RIOTOUS LIVING, 6^ 

ances, who had drawn him away from his earlier friends, 
and led him to misspend the Sabbath. Eventually he 
had married a worldly-minded woman, with stylish no- 
tions, and in order to supply her expensive tastes he 
had ended by taking money out of letters. We asked 
when he had been last in his old place of worship. He 
said that it was on the Sunday after his first offence had 
been committed, and when the sermon referred to an 
agitation then in progress for a Sunday delivery of letters 
in London. Bearing as it did on the circumstances of 
his own downfall, he still remembered an expression to 
the effect : — " The fear of detectives is a poor substitute 
for the fear of God ; nor will the authorities find it easy 
to obtain as servants men willing to break the Fourth 
Commandment, but warranted to keep the other nine." 
In his case, however, the broken Sabbath was no fault 
of the authorities. The day of rest was at his own dis- 
posal. The departure from God was his own evil heart, 
and so were the consequent dishonesty and ruin and 
disgrace. 

Keep within your income. As we hinted at the 
outset, the great temptations to expense are the lust of 
the eye, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life ; and to 
these the great antidote is, not a limited income so much 
as a large self-denial. It is the lust of the flesh when 
the litde boy spends all his halfpence on sugar-plums. 
It is the lust of the eye when the peer cannot resist the 
porcelain of Sevres or the mosaic of Rome, but exhausts 



64 RIOTOUS LIVING. 

his estate in adorning his palace. It is the pride of 
life when the servant flaunts in finery and lets her parents 
starve ; when the merchant spends on his mansion or his 
equipage all by which his neighbour or the world might 
be profited. But just as people can be profuse who are 
not earning a penny, so there are rich men who do not 
riot, and who in the generous use of their income enjoy 
a continual feast. If self-denying, you too will be rich. 
From personal expenditure saving all that you can, you 
will find it available for the most blessed of all bestow- 
ments ; and in paying the school-fees of a younger brother, 
in a thoughtful gift to a sister, in lightening the burden 
of a toil-worn father, in promoting the comfort of a faith- 
ful old servant who can work no longer, in a subscription 
to the missionary society or the Sunday-school excursion, 
in contributing to the happiness or welfare of others you 
will reap the divine reward of self-denial. 



A MIGHTY FAMINE 



And when he had spent all, there arose a mighty famine in that land ; and he began 
to be in want." — Luke xv, 14. 




HK WKXl' AND JOINKI) HIMSELF TO A CITIZEN OE THAT COUN'JRV, A'SV 
HE SEN^r I!LM INTO HIS EIELDS TO EEED SWINE. 



A MIGHTY FAMINE 



God has given us rules, and guarantees that if we 
keep them all will go well. These rules are very plain, 
and it is no small recommendation that they can be under- 
stood and carried out by ordinary common-place people. 

" Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be 
saved. In all thy ways acknowledge God, and He will 
direct thy steps. Your heavenly Father will give the 
Holy Spirit to them that ask Him. Keep thy heart 
with all diligence. Let no corrupt communication pro- 
ceed out of your mouth. Let your yea be yea, and your 
nay be nay. Owe no man anything. Be pitiful, be court- 
eous. To do good and to communicate forget not. Bear 
one another's burdens. Be thou in the fear of God all 
the day long. Be careful for nothing ; but in everything, 
by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your 
requests be made known unto God ; and the peace of God, 
which passeth all understanding, shall keep your heart 
and mind through Christ Jesus." 

There are great differences. There are small natures, 
and small gospels. There are men whose mind has not 



6^ A MIGHTY FAMINE, 

much more than one faculty, and whose creed is contained 
in a single saying ; and there are others to whom the 
whole manifestation of God comes welcome, and who in 
the sixty-six books of the Bible, and in the long annals 
of our human history, as well as n the large panorama 
of creation, recognising the God and Father of our Lord 
Jesus Christ, in the light of God's countenance pursue 
their daily task, and fill up with numberless pursuits and 
experiences an existence all the more comprehensive 
because it is all redeemed, and all the more susceptible 
because none of it is remote from God. 

However, spring's homely harbinger, with its two notes, 
sings as sincerely as the nightingale revelling through 
the diapason; and cheered by that love which is too 
abundant for the soul of an angel, the most limited 
nature will be made loyal, obedient, and filial. Such a 
nature will go by God's rules, and keeping these it can- 
not miss the way to welfare in either world. 

Nay, so good are God's rules, that provided none of 
the others are transgressed, a single rule faithfully fol- 
lowed will conduct to some delightful or desirable land- 
ing-place. " Gather up the fragments that nothing be 
lost" made the fortune of Lafiitte the banker. " Well, 
old fellow, how did you get together all this tin ?" said the 
brusque youth to the wealthy Quaker. '' By one article 
alone, in which thou also mayest deal if thou pleasest — 
civility," was the reply. And just as, by adhering to 
God's rules of frugality and courtesy, these men made 



A MIGHTY FAMINE. 69 

their fortune, so it was, by his possessing a monopoly of 
another virtue that Schwartz the missionary saved the 
garrison of Tanjore. The soldiers were dying of starva- 
tion, but the peasantry would not bring supplies, for they 
did not know the Europeans, and could not trust the 
rajah ; but when the promises to pay were signed by 
Schwartz, the rice came pouring in, followed by nearly a 
thousand bullocks. In such a case the one pound gains 
many pounds, and the single excellence elevates all the 
character. 

On the other hand, all may be lost by one transgres- 
sion. The heart of this young man died away from his 
home. That home ceased to be sacred ; his Father was 
no longer paramount. He felt as if he could do without 
either : nay, with his new notions and purposes, he 
would rather forget them ; so he " took a journey," and 
did not stop till he reached '' a far country," and found 
everything around him strange and novel. The branch 
had not only ceased to abide in the vine, but, " cast 
forth" — fairly over the wall and out of sight, — it speedily 
withered. Grace was gone. Prayer was given up. Good 
feelings faded, and now that temptation and combustible 
corruption came together, he was soon set on fire of hell. 
Lust and passion flamed forth, and he and his substance 
were quickly consumed with riotous living. 

The home of the branch is the vine : the home of 
the heart is God. That, dear reader, is the place for 
you. Honour thy Father in heaven. Love the Lord 



70 A MIGHTY FAMINE. 

with all thy soul. Morning by morning go forth in His 
blessing : and evening by evening, as you return with 
your finished task, your tribute of love and obedience, in 
child-like tenderness tell over the faults of the day, its 
sins and its errors, and for the sake of that dear Son who 
pleaseth the Father alway, ask and obtain forgiveness. 

But if from the tree of redeemed humanity you have 
cut yourself off — if from that Saviour into whom your 
" engrafting was signified and sealed" when parental 
piety placed the lamb in the arms of the Good Shepherd, 
and prayed that you might be more vitally and more 
entirely His than theirs — if from that " gentle Jesus, meek 
and mild," whose hands upheld your first feeble goings, 
and towards whom you once felt such simple and pure 
affection, you have now gone away, it is not for us to pre- 
dict what shall be the first spark to fall into your withered 
heart ; but, dissevered from the Tree of Life, we know 
too well that you are a brand prepared for the burning. 
Perchance the fire is already kindled. Lasciviousness, 
excess of wine, the slow fire of covetousness or the frenzy 
of gambling, worthless companionships and hollow osten- 
tation, may already have possession of that mind from 
which ingenuousness, and faith, and loving-kindness, have 
fled away; but unless God in His mercy snatch the 
brand from the burning, the soul and its substance are 
sure to be wasted by this sinful propensity. 

In the figurative language of the parable, there arose 
in the far country *' a mighty famine." Extravagance 



A MIGHTY FAMINE. 71 

soon brings the noble to ninepence,''' and In the far 
country it is not far that ninepence will go. But there 
may be so mighty a famine and so great, that even the 
noble will not buy the loaf of bread. 

One of the most pitiful incidents in the history of 
British genius is the death of Chatterton. We by no 
means quote it as a case of riotous living; but it will 
illustrate the ** want" which comes over the spirit when 
other resources fail, and the Father s house is far away. — 
When a mere boy of seventeen he had passed off, in 
the name of an ancient English monk, poems of his own, 
with the archaic style so admirably simulated, and the 
historical allusions so adroitly managed, that for a time 
many clever men were taken In, and surmised no forgery. 
Elated by the success of this imposture, and conscious of 
no common powers, from Bristol he came up to London. 
There he promised himself a career of fame and fortune ; 
and as he visited the theatres, and watched the grand equi- 
pages floating past, he saw in no distant vision the day 
when his verses should be In the mouths of men, and 
when the doors of the lordliest saloons would open to the 
poet. But the fame was slow In coming, and meanwhile 

* Describing the separation of Mr. Badman and his bad wife, Bunyan 
says, " They had sinned all away, and parted as poor as howlets. 
And, in reason, how could it be otherwise ? He would have his way, and 
she would have hers ', he among his companions, and she among hers : 
and so they brought their noble to ninepence." — Life of Mr. Badman, 
chap, xviii. The noble was six shillings and eightpence. 



72 A MIGHTY FAMINE. 

the money failed. Hampered by no restraints of con- 
science, he made up his mind to pass himself off for a 
surgeon, and get appointed to a ship ; but before he could 
carry his unprincipled scheme into execution, he found 
himself quite penniless. '* Heaven send you the comforts 
of Christianity," he wrote to a correspondent ; " I request 
them not, for I am no Christian." Bitterly boasting his 
disdain of Christianity, and his independence of it, he 
fell back on his own resources, and a fortnight after, a 
jury brought in a verdict of felo de se on a strange self- 
willed youth found dead in his little room in Brook 
Street, Holborn. 

He cared not for " the comforts of Christianity," and 
so when the mighty famine arose — when editors no longer 
cared for his effusions, and when the frauds and figments 
of years began to collapse — with hunger in the cupboard, 
and with heartless Muses staring at him so hard and 
stony — the trials which in a Christian bring out the 
mettle and make the man, In the case of poor Chatterton 
left no resource save arsenic and impotent anathemas on 
human kind.''' 

* " Quiet, plain scholars have lived, before now, in German or Scotch 
university towns, on boiled peascods for months, or a single guinea a 
quarter, earned by teaching, without saying much about it. Had youths 
of this type been in Chatterton's place in London, in August 1770, they 
would most probably have survived the crisis. They would have 
availed themselves gratefully, and yet honestly, of such small immediate 
aid as those aunts and others that we hear of so slightly in Chatterton's 
letters might perhaps, though poor, have willingly offered at the sharpest 



A MIGHTY FAMINE. 73 

Reverting to the riotous living : not only does it ex- 
haust the woridly substance, but by exhausting health and 
spirits, it destroys the power of enjoyment. Poor as are 
the joys of sense, it is a stupid policy which would distil 
into a single cup every pleasure, and in one frantic 
moment drain it dry. Where life and reason have survived 
the wild experiment, the zest of existence is gone, and 
waking up to a flat and colourless world, fastidious and 
fretful, blasted and blase, in a frequent loathing of life 
and a general contempt of mankind, the voluptuary carries 
to the grave the sins of his youth. 

There is an instructive parable, not so much dwelt on 
as it ought to be. " When the unclean spirit is gone out 
of a man, it* walketh through dry places, seeking rest, 
and hndeth none. Then it saith, I will return into my 
house from whence I came out ; and when it is come it 
findeth the house empty, swept, and garnished. Then 
it goeth and taketh with itself seven other spirits more 
wicked than itself; and they enter in, and dwell there ; and 
the last state of that man is worse than the first."! And 
although primarily pointed against that Jewish '' genera- 
moment of the emergency ; and, even failing that, they would have con- 
quered by sheer patience." — Masson's Essays, Biographical and Critical, 
p. 316. 

* The authorised version has " he," making it appear as if it were 
the man; who walked. The original is neuter ifyroxiv, l\&h), referring 
throughout to the unclean spirit. 

t Matt. xii. 43-5. Luke xi. 24-26. 



74 A MIGHTY FAMINE. 

tlon," the parable is deep in meaning and is widely 
applicable. 

As has been remarked, *' There are the fiend-like and 
the brute-like sins. The one leads frequently to the 
other ; and the most hideous of all conceivable horrors 
is that combination of the two in mingled cruelty and lust, 
of whose possibility many a page of history bears witness. 
But in their origin, and most commonly in their develop- 
ment, the two are widely apart. There are the sins 
which men commit under the influence of the animal 
passions — sins of unchastity, drunkenness, gluttony — and 
these rob them of their manhood's crown, of moral self- 
control, and sink them for a time to the level of the 
brutes ; and there are the sins which men commit under 
the influence of self-interest, hatred, and all the anti- 
social passions — sins of cruelty, perfidy, envy — and these 
do more than sink men to the level of the unmoral brutes ; 
they degrade them to the likeness of devils. As God 
is love, so is His antithesis hatred ; and as man rises 
to the God-like through love, so he falls to the fiend-like 
by hatred."* 

Now it will happen that at some period of life — per- 
haps quite early — a man is possessed by coarse passion. 
'' Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die ; " and he 
flourishes the wine-cup, and gives himself over to the wild- 
est jollity. But somehow or other he is led to reform. 

* "Christian Ethics," extracted from Theological Review, Sept. 1864. 



A MIGHTY FAMINE. 75 

His health gives way, or he gets a great fright, and there 
is a marked change in his habits. It is not that the Spirit 
of God has come in, but for the present at least the 
unclean spirit is gone out, and without becoming a Chris- 
tian, it is so far well that he seems effectually cured of his 
revelry. 

Wearied, however, of wandering in dry places, the 
old demon returns, and the house is empty. There is no 
strong principle pre-occupying the heart, no good angel to 
guard the gate, and, familiar with all the avenues, the foul 
spirit enters the vacant domain. But this time he is not 
alone. He has brought with him seven spirits worse than 
himself. Is it possible ? Is he not an " unclean spirit," 
and can anything be worse than lewdness, debauchery, 
drunkenness ? Yes, indeed. Bad as is the beastly, it can 
be exceeded by the devilish ; and in order to fathom the 
lowest depths of abasement, to drunkenness, revelling, 
and such like, must be added hatred, variance, revenge, 
misanthropy, murder, and the nature already embruted 
shall be dragged downward and yet downward by the 
fiend. 

Of this transmutation of the coarse into the cruel — of 
this eventual merging of the beastly in the diabolical —we 
have countless examples, and on every scale, from the 
Herods and Neros of other days down to the Rushes and 
Palmers of our modern time. Nor is it only the indivi- 
dual who blunts his sensibilities by vice who is likely to 
end in blood and violence, but the sottish nation soon 



'je A MIGHTY FAMINE. 

grows sanguinary. Rome became voluptuous, then 
shouted for gladiatorial games ; and by the unspeakable 
orgies of the Parc-aux-Cerfs France was prepared for the 
stream of slaughter which poured for months along the 
Place Louis Quinze. 

Of the two things — the Impossibility of appeasing 
heart-hunger without going home to God, and the danger 
that the unclean spirit. If not effectually expelled, will 
introduce others worse than himself — we know not that 
we can adduce an example more conclusive than Lord 
Byron. 

It was the curse of this gifted man to inherit wealth 
without the grace to guide it, and so he obeyed the im- 
pulse of a strong and wayward nature, and wasted it on 
wassail. But in the land of Revelry there arose a mighty 
famine. It was not merely that funds ran short and farms 
were coming into the market, but there was something in 
his nature too lofty to be long content with pleasures so 
poor and low. Like generous wine, we might have hoped 
that it would rectify Itself, and, having thrown down Its 
feculence, would come out mellow, rich, and clear as the 
purple amethyst ; when, alas ! the thunder got Into It, and 
turned it all to vinegar. 

The sensual was transformed into the malignant. *' I 
have been looking into a dreadful book," says Dr. James 
Alexander, '' Moore's Life of Byron — the life of one de- 
bauchee written by another. It is the most Instructive 
comment I ever read on the divine word — ' The way of 



A MIGHTY FAMINE. 77 

transgressors is hard/ Voluptuary as he was, ever sighing 
after some new pleasure, and drinking to its depth the 
cup of worldly and sensual enjoyment, Byron seems to 
have experienced little less than a hell upon earth. Here 
I read In awful colours the tormenting power of uncon- 
trolled selfishness. Remorse without repentance, and self- 
contempt without amendment, are dreadful scourges. 
From country to country he fled, but he carried the scor- 
pions with him. His later works are only a disgorging of 
tumultuous thoughts and cruel passions — lust, mortified 
pride, and malignity — as if he would outrage the world 
even at the expense of every pang in his own bosom. 
Happy the poorest, weakest sufferer that believes in 
Christ"* 

There Is a frightful fiendlshness In scattering firebrands, 
in sowing thistle-down. In systematically spreading con- 
tagion and death. But such were the last literary toils of 
Lord Byron. Before he took leave of society and song, he 
launched his final venture, and freighted it with blasphemy, 
impurity, and all sorts of devilry, and then sent it drifting 
towards his native shore. A poor apology for the wicked- 
ness Is the poetry. The contagion may be carried about 
in a goodly garment — the tares, the thistle-down, may be 
dealt forth from an embroidered bag — the incendiary 
coals may be scattered from a golden censer ; but the 
propagandist Is none the less a miscreant — the crime is 
none the less a treason against humanity. 

* Thoughts, by Dr. J. Alexander, p. 420. 



y^ A MIGHTY FAMINE, 

Was he happy ? Take the last lines he wrote— the 
lines on his last birthday : — 

" My days are in the yellow leaf j 

The flowers and fruits of love are gone j 
The worm, the canker, and the grief, '• 

Are mine alone. 

" The fire that on my bosom preys 
Is lone as some volcanic isle ; 
No torch is kindled at its blaze, 
A funeral pile !" 

Was he happy ? On the night before Bellingham 
was hanged, he went to see the sight. " Seeing an un- 
fortunate woman lying on the steps of a door, with some 
expression of compassion he offered her a few shillings ; 
but, instead of accepting them, she violently pushed away 
his hand, and starting up with a yell of laughter, began 
to mimic the lameness of his gait. He did not utter a 
word ; but," says Mr. Bailey, who tells the story, " I could 
feel his arm trembling within mine as he left her.""' Can 
any man be happy, who, himself the victim of vile pas- 
sions, has strewn his path through life with the wrecks of 
virtue ? who not only carries live coals in his bosom, 
but those cockatrice eggs which, even here, as they leap 
into life, and begin to exert their fiery fangs, give terrible 
presage of coming shame and everlasting contempt ? 

No, reader, the Most High has so constituted the 
* Moore's Life of Byron, 4to, vol. i. p. 357. 



A MIGHTY FAMINE. 79 

mind of man that the indulgence of the malevolent affec- 
tions itself is misery ; and of all the paths which at life's 
outset invite the inexperienced traveller, the surest to 
pierce through with many sorrows is the path of sensual 
indulgence. It is a vain attempt 

" With things of earthly sort, with aught but God, 
With aught but moral excellence, and truth, and love, 
To fill and satisfy the immortal soul." 

But you are not mocked by your Maker. Those great 
and glorious objects exist for which he has given you an 
affinity, and towards which, in their most exalted inter- 
vals, the highest powers in your nature aspire. There is 
truth, there is goodness, there is God. There is the life 
of Jesus recorded in the Book ; there is the Spirit of God 
now working in the world. Ponder that life till, associ- 
ated with a living Redeemer, it shines around your path 
a purifying protecting presence. And pray for that Spirit, 
till under his kindly teaching you " taste and see that the 
Lord is good" — till expanded affections find an infinite 
object — till He who has thus strengthened your heart is 
become your portion for ever. 



FEEDING SWINE 



" And he went and joined himself to a citizen of that country; and he sent him into 
his fields to feed swine. And he would fain have filled his belly with the husks 
that the swine did eat : and no man gave unto him." — Luke xv. 15, 16. 




UK WOULD FAIN HAVE FILLED HIS BELLY WITH THE HUSKS THAT 
THE SWINE DID EAT. 



FEEDING SWINE. 



To how much the portion of goods amounted which the 
younger son took with him we are not told ; nor are we 
told how long it lasted. But once it is in the hands of a 
spendthrift, wonderful is the speed with which money 
disappears. As paragons of senseless profusion Dante 
has handed down the names of Stricca and his com- 
panions,'" who sold their estates and bought a princely 
mansion where they might spend their days in revelry. 
Their horses' shoes were silver, and, if one came off, the 
servants were forbidden to pick it up ; and, with like 
disdain of mean economy throughout, the united fortunes 
lasted only twenty months, and they finished off in the 
utmost misery. The Sienese spendthrifts have been 
often distanced in our living day ; and the low taverns 
along the Thames, where our sailors waste their hard-won 
earnings — the hotels of Melbourne and San Francisco, 
where successful diggers fool away in a flash of riot the 
gold for which they have toiled so long, after a coarse 
and vulgar fashion could parallel the wildest waste of 
Heliogabalus or Lucullus. 

* Inferno^ canto 29. 



84 FEEDING SWINE. 

More remarkable than the speed with which the 
money disappears is the small satisfaction which it yields. 
Here, in London, you can order a dinner at from '^v^ to 
seven guineas a-head, and if there are ten guests their 
entertainment will cost you from sixty to eighty pounds. 
And everything shall be perfectly quiet and orderly — 
no excess, no noise, no revelry; but out of this large 
expenditure how much happiness have you created ? Of 
the company perchance one or two, with a palate ex- 
quisitely educated, may appreciate the rare viands and 
rarer wines ; and one or two more may tell it to the first 
acquaintance they meet next morning, subjoining — " But 
really I would as soon have dined at home ; " and of the 
remainder some may regret the waste, or envy the 
wealth of the entertainer, or laugh at the vain show. 
Suppose that, instead of this feast for your rich neighbours, 
you were laying out the money in a treat to the poor ; sup- 
pose you took a ragged school or the inmates of a work- 
house to the seaside or the country — in the previous 
chapter we are told, " When thou makest a feast, call the 
poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind : and thou shalt be 
blessed ; for they cannot recompense thee : for thou shalt 
be recompensed at the resurrection of the just;" — with- 
out even waiting till then, you will find in the pleasures 
of the moment an anticipation of the final reward. Your 
guests may not make speeches, nor feel all of them exactly 
as you would have liked ; but they have had a holiday 
and a wholesome meal. Away from mephitic dens, they 



FEEDING SWINE, 85 

have inhaled pure oxygen ; eyes dull with looking at grey 
pavements and dusty yards have been refreshed with 
green fields, or have sparkled at the boundless blue, and 
when their hearts were filled with food and gladness, 
words have been spoken, hymns have been sung, which 
helped to make them love God and their fellow-creatures 
more. The day will be a bright spot in a hundred memo- 
ries, and a protracted feast to the giver of the festival. 

From wasteful expenditure small satisfaction remains ; 
but if, like the prodigal, your expenditure be on self- 
indulgence and excess, the more money the greater the 
misery. If you had stood on the bridge and dropped 
the sovereign straight down into the river, it would not 
have come back into your hand any more than the 
sovereign spent at the play with a jolly supper after- 
wards ; but it would not have left a pain in your head, 
and a self-loathing in your spirit. If, like George Heriot 
with the king's acknowledgment, you had put the bank- 
notes on the hearth, and sent them flaming up the 
chimney, they would have left you far richer than those 
you have spent on reckless companions and riotous living. 
If, like Cleopatra, you had dissolved a pearl — if you had 
put together the income of years — all that has been spent 
on self-indulgence — perhaps in enticing others into sin — 
could you have put it all together, and, like the queenly 
jewel, dissipated it in dust and air, we might have been 
sorry for the idle sacrifice, but the wasted money would 
not have wasted you. Cleopatra had another pearl, the 



86 FEEDING SWINE. 

gift of peerless beauty. That gift was perverted, and it 
hatched a serpent ; it came back into her bosom^the asp 
which stung her. So with the possessions of the prodigal. 
Talents laid up in a napkin, pearls melted in vinegar, 
will benefit no one ; but rank, fortune, health, high spirits, 
laid out in the service of sin, are scorpion-eggs, and 
fostered and fully grown, the forthcoming furies will seize 
on the conscience, and with stings of fire will torment it 
evermore. 

Whatsoever was the fortune which our spendthrift 
took into the far country, it was now exhausted. He 
knew what it was to come to the last shekel, and eat 
the last dry crust. He knew what it was to saunter 
along the street, and look wistfully in at doors and 
windows, and pass on with the painful knowledge that his 
pocket was empty. And it was astonishing how quickly 
his old companions found out his altered circumstances. 
Some who had lately feasted at his cost were seized 
with sudden blindness, and could not recognise him ; and 
others, who used to have loads of leisure, were now in 
a perpetual hurry, and could only wave a flying "How 
do ? " as they hastened past. And it might not be all 
hard-heartedness ; for they were beginning to be badly 
off themselves. There had arisen a mighty famine, and 
whilst the poor were perishing, those not absolutely 
destitute were reduced to inferior fare and short allow- 
ance. Already — the last coin vanished — the prodigal 
had converted everything into bread : rings, chains, orna- 



FEEDING SWINE. ^y 

ments of every kind ; and as, owing to the hard times, 
the market was glutted with such trinkets, it was Httle he 
obtained : and now, with a best robe or dress-coat in a 
bundle, or some such relic of his recent finery, he might 
be seen stealing up back alleys, or bashfully entering 
some dingy shop and asking a small advance from 
the hawk-faced owner ; till money, ornaments, apparel, 
everything, was eaten up, and still the wolf kept howling 
— still he felt as if he must perish with hunger. In des- 
peration he threw himself on a wealthy citizen. Oh, how 
unlike his own kind father, this proud and surly pagan ! 
and how unlike his own dainty fastidious self, this 
willingness to dig — this eagerness for drudgery ! But 
anything to keep soul and body together : bid me do 
anything so as I may earn a morsel of food. "• There, 
Moses, there are the hogs : go, feed the swine." Oh, 
yes ; he will : his spirit is broken ; there is no pride now. 
Utterly abject, unable to resent the bitter mockery which 
assigned such employment to a Jew, and amidst the un- 
clean creatures feeling the isolation of the outcast, the 
self-contempt of the apostate and renegade, he drives 
forth to the field his loathsome charge.'''' But though 

* Remembering what Herodotus says as to the Egyptian detestation 
of swine and swineherds (ii. 47), the reader may think that there is an 
incongruity in making Egypt the scene of the prodigal's sojourn ; but 
these animals figure on the remaining monuments of old Egypt, and 
the herdsman or driver as well, with his whip and his noose, as repro- 
duced in the picture of Mr. Selous (see Wilkinson's Manners a?td 
Customs of Ancient Egypt ^ vol. iii. p. 34) ; and Herodotus himself 



88 FEEDING SWINE. 

there Is food for the swine, there is none for him. The 
day is far spent, and his fast is not broken. No meal 
is brought out ; no menial comes near him. It is plain 
he is forgotten ; most likely on purpose. But these 
crooked pods, which the pigs are so greedily crunching, 
do not look so bad, and he has seen them in the hands 
of the children and beggars. He tries them, but alas ! 
so husky and hollow, they only mock his hunger. Faint 
and weary, for an instant he closes his eyes, and in his 
dream, behold, he eateth ! but he awaketh, and his soul 
hath appetite. The landscape is a skeleton. Vegetation 
droops ; the earth is iron ; and, sickly and swooning, 
nature seems as if about to give up the ghost. It is the 
Far Country, and the Far Country in Famine. 

Whether it be a natural nobleness, or an acquired 
refinement — the one, the direct gift of God ; the other, 
an indirect creation of the gospel — it is seldomi forfeited 
all at once. Step by step the downward path is trodden. 
The heart dies away from God. The prodigal goes forth 
from His presence ; and, love being lost, fear soon fol- 

assigns a use for them : if not permissible as food, they still were 
serviceable to the husbandman by treading the seed-corn into the soil 
left soft by the refluent river. The " husks " on which they were fed are 
the crooked, horn-like pods of the carob-tree, Ceratonia siliqua. It still 
grows abundantly in Egypt and the Holy Land. See " Husk " in Fair- 
bairn's Imperial Bible Dictionary. The lover of Shakspere will re- 
member Orlando, " Shall I keep your hogs and eat husks with them % 
What prodigal portion have I spent that I should come to such penury?" 
As You Like It, act i. scene i. 



FEEDING SWINE. 89 

lows. He does that which is good in his own eyes — 
works the will of the flesh and of the mind, and seeks 
his happiness in riotous living — in those forms of self- 
gratification which suit his temperament, whether that 
be animal or intellectual, coarse or aesthetic. Then 
comes a period of exhaustion and depression. The 
substance is wasted. Money and credit are gone, and 
the power of enjoyment is gone. Nerves are shattered, 
life is vapid, the old sensations pall. There is a famine 
in that land ; and, in despair, he tries the husks which 
the swine do eat. He flies to fierce excitement and 
strong stimulants — betting, gambling, speculating, drink- 
ing ; or, utterly demoralised, he becomes a bold beggar, 
fastening himself on any acquaintance or stranger who 
does not forcibly shake him off, glorying in his shame, 
amongst villanous associates boasting his good con- 
nections or his former respectability, and, snatching 
tit-bits from the swine-trough, shows how thorough is the 
transformation since he fell from his first estate. 

In the, days of the Regency there was a man much 
envied, and in the ranks of fashion his influence was para- 
mount. It was not that he was a statesman or a hero, a 
thinker or a speaker ; but, as far as an outside can make 
it, he was the gentleman. His bow, his gait, his dress, 
were perfection : the Regent took lessons at his toilette ; 
when peeresses brought out their daughters, they 
awaited with anxiety his verdict, and no party was dis- 
tinguished from which he withheld his presence. Very 



90 FEEDING SWINE. 

poor padding within, heartless and soulless, the usual saw- 
dust which does for a dandy, by infinite painstaking and 
equal impudence he scrambled into his much-envied 
ascendancy, the arbiter of taste, the dictator of the draw- 
ing-room, the leader of the great army of beaux and 
butterflies. Then came a cloud. The prince withdrew 
his favour, and, of course, the prince's friends. His 
mysterious wealth suddenly took wing, and means which 
he took to recover it sent him into life-long exile at 
Calais and Caen. He had no God."'' His god was the 
sunshine — court-favour, the smiles of the great and the 
gay. The instant these were withdrawn, the poor Apollo 

* A more godless existence than poor Beau Brummell's it is im- 
possible to conceive. The ideas of accountabihty and worship do not 
occur, as far as we remember, in all the conversations and letters 
preserved in the two volumes of his biography. Even as consul at 
Caen he never so much as paid the mark of respect to the religion of 
his country implied in a visit to the English place of worship, and the 
chaplain, who often visited him in his last days, writes : — " He appeared 
quite incapable of conversing on religious subjects. ... I never, 
in the course of my attendance upon the sick, aged, and dying, came in 
contact with so painful an exhibition of human vanity and apparent 
ignorance and thoughtlessness of and respecting a future state ; for I 
have before visited persons whose mental powers were equally shattered, 
but still it was possible to touch some chord connected with religion, 
to which they responded, though perhaps weakly and imperfectly : 
with him there was some response when sounded on worldly subjects, 
none on religious, until a few hours before he died, when, in reply to 
my repeated entreaties, that he would try and pray, he said, ' I do try,' 
but he added something which made me doubt whether he understood 
me." — Jesse's Life of George Brum?nell, vol. ii. p. 350. 



FEEDING SWINE. 91 

butterfly came fluttering down, down into the dust, and 
never soared again. It was all in vain that old ac- 
quaintances tried to keep him out of debt and discredit. 
With no gratitude, and with little conscience, and with 
only that amount of pride which makes the misanthrope, 
he begged and borrowed on all sides, at the table d'hote 
glad to get a bottle . of wine from some casual tourist 
by telling stories of old times, and unable to cross the 
threshold when his only suit of clothes was in process 
of repair. The broken-down exquisite began to be in 
want, and, when borrowing a biscuit from a grocer, or a 
cup of coflee from a kindly hostess, he may have re- 
membered the days when he lavished thousands on folly, 
the days when he was the favourite guest at the palace. 
Truly, it was a mighty famine, but it did not bring him to 
himself It only alienated from mankind a heart which 
had all along been estranged from the living God, and 
gave frightful force to his cynicism. " Madame de St. 
Ursain," as he said to his landlady, '' were I to see a man 
and a dog drowning together in the same pond, and no 
one was looking on, I would prefer saving the dog." 

Just to take one instance more where the portion of 
goods was vilely cast away. More than fifty years ago, 
in the pleasant town of Tiverton, there was a clergyman, 
popular and clever, but by far too fond of field-sports. 
One day, however, a friend, a mighty hunter like him- 
self, suddenly expired whilst uttering most impious 
language. The awe-struck minister abjured dogs and 



92 FEEDING SWINE. 

guns, and begging his people's prayers, vowed to live 
henceforward for his sacred calling. For months his 
preaching was earnest and impressive, but at the end of 
that time he resumed the sporting life with fresh devo- 
tion, and over and above betrayed a passion from which 
few are delivered. He had acquired a love for gaming. 
A presentation to Kew-cum- Petersham brought him to 
the neighbourhood of London, and gave him oppor- 
tunity to frequent the gambling saloons of St. James's ; 
and whilst numbers were reading with delight his Many 
Things i7i Few Woi'ds, poor *' Lacon" himself was sitting 
far into the night among swindlers and pigeons, and then 
slinking home to a suburban hovel to sleep as best he 
could till far into the day. The upshot was, that he was 
forced to abscond, his living was declared void, and after 
leading a vagabond life between New York and Paris, the 
clergyman, the author, and the late fellow of King's, 
perished by his own hand at Fontainebleau.* 

And whether it be Richard Savage, whose riotous 
living at last imbrued his hands in another's blood, and 
then landing him in the debtor's prison, left him to be 
burled at the cost of the kind-hearted gaoler ; or Emma, 
Lady Hamilton, passing like a meteor through foreign 
courts, and making wise men mad with brilliancy and 
beauty, then cast off by society, and from a sordid lodging 

In 1832. There is a brief notice of Caleb Colton in Rose's Bio- 
graphical Dictionary, and some interesting details are given by a fellow- 
townsman in the Leisure Hour for 1855, P- 42. 



FEEDING SWINE. 93 

carried in a deal box to a nameless grave ; or men like 
Beckford, who, spending prodigious wealth in self-idolatry, 
have lived to find that the idol was not worth the wor- 
ship ; — by cases which it would weary you to quote, we 
might show how invariably, if there be but time to work 
out the legitimate sequel, separation from God ends in 
desolation and sorrow. We might show how often the 
wayward child, who would not sit contented at the Father's 
board and eat the children's bread, has ended at the stye 
and been fain to clutch at husks which the swine do eat. 
And from the nature of the case, as well as the Word 
of God, we might show how inevitably the far country 
becomes a waste and howling wilderness, and how, soon 
or late, the soul which there abides must die of hunger. 

But we weary you. You would rather hear something 
on the other side, and to that other side we gladly turn. 
And if self-seeking can never be successful — if separation 
from God is the death of the soul — if carelessness about 
others' welfare, not to say misanthropy, is misery, there can 
be little difficulty in deciding what is life and joy and peace. 

Love to Christ is happiness. Our late friend David 
Sandeman was naturally of a sombre temperament ; but 
when it pleased God to reveal to him the Saviour, it was 
a total transformation. It almost lifted him off the earth, 
and made him hold so lightly house and lands, and even 
dear kindred, that he was saved, what is to some of us 
a sore distraction, a divided heart. The night when 
he was dying of cholera at Amoy a friend asked him. 



94 FEEDING SWINE. 

" Have you any pain ?" and he answered, " The only pain 
I have known since I knew Jesus Christ is sinr " Have 
you any message to your friends ?" " Tell them, it was 
only last night that the love of Jesus came rushing into 
my soul like the waves of the sea ; so that I had to cry. 
Stop, Lord, it is enough. O the height, and depth, and 
length, and breadth, of the love of Jesus ! and I was con- 
strained to cry out — 

' All too long have we been parted ; 
Let my spirit speed to his.' " 

Christ did not disappoint him. For His name's sake he 
had sought that far country, and very pleasant did he 
find the Master's service there. But the task was soon 
ended, and death was swallowed up in victory. 

Harmony with God is happiness. You may feel, *' I 
am not capable of such concentration. Mine is not a 
fervid or rapturous nature. It must be very blessed to 
feel like Sandeman, or rather to feel like Paul — For me 
to live is Christ. But with dispersive tastes and a desul- 
tory turn — fond of books, fond of friends, fond of travel 
— I despair of being ever drawn up to that height of de- 
votion where One Object is the only spectacle, and love 
to Him the only feeling." But if love to Christ is the main- 
spring of Christianity, Christianity itself is the completion 
or renovation of our manhood — the emancipation from 
sin's dominion of the human nature — the "new" but 
original " creature " set free for the service of God and 
for the enjoyment of all God-given happiness. Hear the 



FEEDING SWINE, 95 

testimony of one who for the best part of fourscore years 
had Hved this life : " I have heard some say that ' worlds 
should not tempt them back to tread again life's dreary 
waste/ Such language is not for me. I should not shrink 
from the proposal of repetition. ' Goodness and mercy 
have followed me all the days of my life.' My duties 
have not been burdening and irksome. My trials have 
been few compared with my comforts. My pleasures 
have been cheap and simple, and therefore very numer- 
ous. I have enjoyed without satiety the seasons and the 
sceneries of nature. I have relished the bounties of pro- 
vidence, using them with moderation and thankfulness. 
I have delighted in the means of grace ; unutterable have 
been my delights in studying and perusing the Scriptures. 
How have I verified the words of Young — 

' Retire and read thy Bible to be gay !' 

I have seldom been without hearing of some instance of 
usefulness from the pulpit or the press ... I have a better 
opinion of mankind than I had when I began my public 
life."'" Compare the dissenting minister with Beau Brum- 
mell — the one taking God's way of it, the other always 
taking his own : — the fop always scrambling after costly 
enjoyments, and finding them apples of Sodom in his 
grasp ; the contented Christian avowing, " My pleasures 
have been very numerous, for they were cheap and sim- 
ple ; " the self-centred exquisite leading a life of perpetual 
* Autobiography of the Rev. W. fay, ip. 158. 



96 FEEDING SWINE. 

envy and vindictiveness and spleen, — the unambitious 
and cheerful man of God radiating on others his own 
bright, devout, and hopeful feelings, and so ending with 
an improved opinion of mankind, whilst the disappointed 
worldling finished off by saying that rather than save a 
man he would rescue a drowning- doe. 

To dwell on high is happiness. You may think Mr. 
Jay might well be cheerful, for he was healthy and active 
and free from all ailment. Hear then what Dr. Arnold 
says of his sister, long" the victim of hopeless disease : 
" I never saw a more perfect instance of the spirit of 
power and of love, and of a sound mind ; intense love, 
almost to the annihilation of selfishness — a daily martyr- 
dom for twenty years, during which she adhered to her 
earlv-formed resolution of never talking about herself: 
thoughtful about the very pins and ribands of my wife's 
dress, about the making of a doll's cap for a child, — but of 
herself, save only as regarded her ripening in all goodness, 
wholly thoughtless ; enjoying everything lovely, graceful, 
beautiful, high-minded, whether in God's works or man's, 
with the keenest relish ; inheriting the earth to the very 
fulness of the promise, though never leaving her crib, nor 
changing her posture ; and preserved through the very 
valley of the shadow of death from all fear or impatience, 
or from every cloud of impaired reason, which might mar 
the beauty of Christ's Spirit's glorious work."^'' 

* Life of Dr. Arnold, letter 52, vol. i. p. 332. 



A WISE RESOLUTION 



H 



And when he came to himself, he said, How many hired servants of my father's have 
bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger ! I will arise and go to my 
father, and will say unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven and before thee, 
and am no more worthy to be called thy son : make me as one of thy hired 
servants. And he arose, and came to his father." — Luke xv. 17-20. 




WHEN HE WAS YET A GREAT WAY OFF, HIS FATHER SAW HTM. 



A WISE RESOLUTION. 



To many a clever man God says " Thou fool!" He says 
it to the man who says ''No God !" — who, with no father 
for his spirit, is content with an ape for his ancestor ; or 
who, " corrupt and vile," has so embruted that spirit as 
to lose all memorial of his Maker, the echo in his con- 
science as well as the image on his soul. He says it to 
those who, forgetful of the great power of God, doubt if 
a resurrection be possible, or who, conceding the fact, 
show a needless solicitude as to the method, and, with 
officious anxiety, offer Infinite Wisdom their best advice. 
And He says it to those whose brilliant husbandry 
bursting their barns, they are forced to build greater ; 
whilst in all their architecture they take no thought for 
eternal habitations, and spend neither skill nor effort on 
those harvests which alone God receives to His garner. 
And in many a history it is the first hopeful moment 
when a man says it to himself That grey morning when 
David shouted from the hill-top, and held up the pitcher 
and spear which he had carried off from the pillow of his 
sleeping persecutor, a gleam of good-feeling flitted over 
the spirit of Saul, and he exclaimed, " Return, my son 



100 A WISE RESOLUTION. 

David : for I will no more do thee harm. Behold, I 
have played the fool, and have erred exceedingly." In 
confessing himself a fool, it almost looked as if Saul were 
becoming wise ; and although the moody cloud soon 
returned and gathered in again, these flickering revivals 
of a better time leave a touching pathos round a tragedy 
otherwise so severe and sombre. 

We have now reached a new stage in the history. 
Up to this time the prodigal had no quarrel with himself, 
and had never questioned the wisdom of his own pro- 
cedure. He had exhibited forethought and shrewd cal- 
culation in the steps he took when leaving home. Instead 
of a penniless impulsive elopement, he had curbed his 
impatience, and by securing his portion of goods he had 
provided for future enjoyment. And for anything we 
know, amongst his loose companions he may have been 
aught but a dolt or a dullard : ''a fellow of infinite jest, 
and most excellent fancy." Nevertheless to a sound 
mind something more is needful than mere wit, sparkle, 
briniancy, and for true wisdom a poor substitute is 
worldly knowing. This the prodigal began to feel. 
Excitement at an end, the portion of goods exhausted, 
swine for his companions, a churl for his master, — those 
stern realities, hunger, hardship, nakedness, brought him 
to himself, and to himself he said " Thou fool ! " 

Where there is any nobleness in the nature, it 
occasionally happens that the very excess of riot leads to 
a revulsion. '' I was converted by six weeks' debauchery," 



A WISE RESOLUTION. loi 

says a somewhat paradoxical character In fiction ; and 
when the good minister remonstrates against his speaking 
thus hghtly of the Divine operations, he rephes, " I am 
not speaking Hghtly. If I had not seen that I was 
making a hog of myself very fast, and that pig-wash, even 
if I could get plenty of it, was a poor sort of thing, I 
should never have looked life fairly in the face to see 
what was to be done with it." ''' And when the Spirit of 
God enkindles or keeps smouldering on from better days 
any of the finer feelings, in the very sight of the swine- 
trough there is enough to sober and startle. Greek 
writers tell of a creature which combined every element 
of hideousness, and was capable of much mischief as well ; 
but if by any chance it got a glimpse of itself, the face in 
the mirror was fatal — the sight of the monster slew the 
miscreant. The perfection of ugliness is evil, and if, like 
the basilisk, the sinner could only view his own deformity, 
it is a sight which self-complacency could never survive. 
We have known actual instances, and you may have 
known them : instances where there was a long course of 
levity and self-indulgence, but no remonstrance was 
effectual, till some crime was committed, and awakening 
all the furies, conscience shouted in a voice of thunder : 
instances where the heart was not given to God, but the 
life was so decorous that respectability said, '' Thank 
heaven, I am not as other men!" till a fall into open 
sin killed the Pharisee, and extorted the cry, " God be 
* Felix Holt, vol. i. p. iii. 



102 A WISE RESOLUTION. 

merciful to me a sinner : " instances where no warning, 
no entreaty availed, till in sight of the swine-trough and 
its wallowing frequenters, the husks dropped from the 
hand of the prodigal, and he said, " I will arise and go to 
my father." 

In bringing sinners to their right mind, the sobering 
influence which God most frequently employs is affliction. 
" Because they rebelled against the Word of God, and 
contemned the counsel of the Most High : therefore he 
brought down their heart with labour ; they fell down and 
there was none to help. Then they cried unto the Lord 
in their trouble, and He saved them out of their dis- 
tresses." This history is repeated in almost every pro- 
digal. The counsel of the Most High is contemned, the 
Father's house is forsaken ; and for a time the sinner is 
allowed to fill himself with the fruit of his own devices. 
At first that fruit is pleasant — ''fruit to be desired to 
make one wise," — opening up new experiences, revealing 
new enjoyments : the golden apple, the magical mandra- 
gora, the Hesperian lotus, gloriously forgetful of home, of 
honour, and of duty ; the Noachian clustre suffusing life 
with false glamour, and with the lie of the first forbidden 
fruit cajoling its victim, till the delusion dissipates, till the 
drunken hero wakes up in the pig-stye, till he to whose 
last consciousness sounded the whisper, "Thou art a god!" 
aroused by a box on the ear, sees scowling over him his 
terrible taskmaster — his demi-god comrades transfigured 
into hogs, and his own fingers, lately bejewelled and daintily 



A WISE RESOLUTION. 103 

uplifting the goblet, In their gaunt grimy grasp no 
longer retentive of even such husks as the swine do eat. 

If you have been forgetting God, or forsaking the 
Father's house, the heart which prosperity hardens may 
be brought down by affliction ; and you may well be 
thankful for the sorrow which sends you home. A man 
who had a praying wife was himself a drunkard. He was 
a gambler, and went to all the races within his reach, 
usually returning tipsy. Fond of fighting, he was withal 
a brutal husband, and often struck his wife. Beyond all 
this, as he wished that there was no God, he tried to 
persuade himself that there Is none. There never was a 
bolder blasphemer. One night, when he was swearing 
dreadfully, his wife begged him to desist. *' Tom," she 
said, "the Lord will strike you dead." *'Who is the 
Lord ?" he shouted, and then started off in oath after 
oath with the wildest imprecations, defying the Lord to 
touch him, vociferating and gesticulating till the perspira- 
tion stood upon his brow, and he sank down exhausted 
by his paroxysm of frantic impiety. For capturing a 
leviathan like this, you would have thought of an iron 
cable ; you would have been for putting a tremendous 
hook in his nose. But the Lord had hold of him already. 
How ? Through his excellent wife, you reply. Well, 
she lost her 'father, and on the Sabbath after the funeral 
she prevailed on her husband to accompany her to church. 
The sermon was on the depravity of man. He gnashed 
his teeth as he heard it, and with all his own corruption 



104 ^ ^/^^ RESOLUTION. 

stirred to fury he turned on his poor helpmate as she 
came home, and, in her new mourning, kicked her down 
stairs. But a silken cord, if it be God's, will draw out 
leviathan — nay, with such a cord in the hand of a little 
child He can lead the lion. This brutal fathei* had a 
daughter two years of age, and out of the mouth of this 
babe the Lord often stilled the enemy and avenger. 
When coming home in a savage humour, and knocking 
about his helpless partner, the little Maria would scramble 
into her mother's lap, and with her pinafore wiping the 
tears, would gently bid her '' Don't cry, mammxa," and 
turning on him a reproving face, would say, " Ah! naughty 
papa, to make poor mamma cry." This little one he really 
loved, and this little one the Lord took. Soon after 
returning from her grave, the father was once more per- 
suaded to enter a place of worship ; and this time the 
word of the Lord found him. The parable of " The wise 
and foolish virgins " opened his eyes, and feeling that if 
he continued in his wickedness he must perish eternally, 
with all the earnestness of an awakened conscience he 
began to seek salvation. Night and day he sought it, 
often with crying and tears ; and when at last the Saviour 
stood revealed before him, he consecrated life to His 
service, and has ever since proved a faithful follower and 
a valiant soldier of the Lord Jesus Christ.''' 

True, there are some whom the Lord brings to Him- 

A Brand plucked frojn the Burni?ig (1856). The author is now 
(1866) a zealous and useful clergyman of the Church of England. 



A WISE RESOLUTION. 105 

self in ways of wondrous gentleness ; like the late saintly 
Csesar Malan, whose account of his conversion was, " My 
heavenly Father awakened me with a kiss." But usually, 
where there have been great godlessness and reckless- 
ness, the ''riot" is followed by a ''mighty famine," and it 
is amidst the consternation of a sore calamity, or in the 
wilderness of affliction, that divine mercy overtakes and 
brings home the wanderer. Towards the close of last 
century, one of the most gifted men in the Netherlands 
was a young physician at Dort ; but to his Dutch industry 
he added French philosophy, and with his scientific 
resources and his energetic self-reliant genius, he dis- 
carded Christianity and felt no need for God. One day, 
however, in the capsizing of a boat, there sank into the 
weltering river his wife and only child, and in that over- 
whelming moment, poetry and philosophy could do no 
more to comfort him, than the poor frightened ousel which 
flitted to and fro shrieking over the scene. The blackness 
of darkness engulfed him, but through the same chasm at 
which the flood rushed in and drowned his world there 
burst upon his spirit the claims of God, the guilt of the 
transgressor, the need of a Saviour; till after many a dismal 
day the rainbow of the covenant spanned the flood, and 
proclaimed the divine forgiveness. Very different from 
the experience of the gentle Genevese was the struggle 
towards the cross of this sturdy Hollander. After he 
had become a missionary to the Hottentots, Vander- 
kemp's account of it was, " The Lord sprang upon me 



io6 A WISE RESOLUTION. 

like a warrior, and felled me to the earth by one stroke 
of his arm," 

Peradventure these pages may be turned over by 
some one whose life has hitherto been a course of self- 
pleasing, but to whom the days have come when he says, 
*' I have no pleasure in them." You once were happy, 
you at least were gay ; but you have lost your fortune, 
you have lost your popularity or your good position ; you 
have lost that large fund of hilarity and animal exuber- 
ance which made up for every other lack ; or sadder still, 
there has been taken away with a stroke the desire of 
your eyes, and now that the light of your life Is ex- 
tinguished, small is the joy which passing hours bring, 
faint the hope which the future awakens. 

Yet, dear friend, if you are wise, from this very sea- 
son may date the best and most blessed time in all your 
history. Like the passengers through the tunnelled Alp, 
from the dark and the cold and the stifling air emerging 
on the broad light-flooded plains of Lombardy, it is by a 
way which they know not, gloomy and underground, that 
the convoy is carried which God's Spirit is bringing to the 
wealthy place ; and your present grief you will have no 
reason to regret if it introduce you to God's friendship, 
and to joys which do not perish in the using. It may not 
have struck you, but you have been trying to create your 
own Eden, and it was an Eden with the living God left 
out. For a time the experiment seemed to prosper, but 
if it is blighted you have no right to complain ; and though 



A WISE RESOLUTION. 107 

it should never blossom again, even the howling wilder- 
ness does you a service if it makes you a pilgrim and 
turns your face to the better land. Affliction is God's 
message. This mighty famine is no accident, it is God's 
voice sounding through the far country, and saying to you, 
Come Home ! 

Yes, at this moment you are miserable. Disappointed 
with yourself, dissatisfied with your lot, in broken health, 
bereft of your dearest friend, you are in the position in 
which sooner or later every one will find himself who has 
placed his happiness in things created or things external. 
But even at this moment there are many outwardly less 
favoured than you who are contented and cheerful. 
You are Invited to join them. Will you not go ? It 
is " bread " you need. You have fasted long, and your 
soul is weak : the word of God will give you strength 
and stamina. It is clothing you need. If not outwardly 
tattered, the inner man Is In rags ; God will clothe you 
with the robe of a Redeemer's righteousness, and will 
adorn you with the garments of the great salvation. It 
Is shelter you need ; you will find It In the Father's house. 
It is honourable employment you need ; you will find It 
in the Father's service. It is love you need ; you will 
find it In the Father's arms. 

Prodigal son ! prodigal daughter ! has not God been 
very kind to you ? Is there a good thing you possess 
which has not come from His hand ? Is It not In Him that 
you have lived and moved and had your being ? Who 



io8 A WISE RESOLUTION. 

was it that through the eyes of your mother smiled over 
your cradle, and surrounded life's outset with love and 
endearment ? Who was it that for your first tottering 
steps spangled the turf with the daisies of spring, and 
fanned your fresh face with its breezes ? Who was it 
that in hushed and holy hours went on before you, 
through Sabbaths and hymns and Jesus' sweet name, allur- 
ing you to glory, honour, and immortality ? and whose 
bright countenance was that which sometimes came so 
near your own, leaving a soft and pleasant glow, till 
one provocation after another rose up and darkened all 
the atmosphere and shut it out for ever ? Oh, what a sin 
to go away from such goodness ! what a sin to spend in 
self-pleasing the gifts of such bounty ! what a sin to be a 
lover of pleasure rather than the lover of God ! 

Are you not sorry ? In forsaking such a home and 
coming to this far country, have you not played the fool 
and erred exceedingly ? In the life you have led, in the 
passions you have indulged, in the thorough estrange- 
ment of your heart from Infinite Excellence, do you not 
feel that you have sinned against heaven, and that you are 
no more worthy to be called God's child ? 

And will you not arise and go to your Father ? Is it 
not wonderful that He should still desire your return ? In 
His house there is bread and to spare, and He invites you 
home. Arise and go. 

Sobered by his altered circumstances, the prodigal 
was brought to his right mind, and in the way in which 



A WISE RESOLUTION. 109 

he spoke of himself and his father he showed right feel- 
ing, and in the determination '* I will arise and go to my 
father," he came to a right resolution ; but the whole was 
crowned and completed by his taking the right step : " he 
arose and to his father he came." Instead of musing any 
longer, he started up and at once commenced his journey. 
Disgusted with the far country, its swine and its citizens, 
its harlots and riotous living, he instantly and for ever 
renounced them ; and his heart full of shame and contri- 
tion and a timid tender hopefulness, he had already com- 
menced his journey. 

That promptitude saved him. If the kind Spirit of 
God now moves you, let no pretext detain you ; but 
breaking away from every snare, in this propitious 
moment and with full purpose of heart give yourself to 
God. No time can be more opportune, and whilst God 
waits to be gracious all that the devil asks is delay. 

A good many winters ago we were sent for to see an 
elderly man, far gone in his last sickness. He was in a 
wretched comfortless attic near Lincoln's Inn, but had 
once been an Edinburgh advocate. He told us his story. 
He had been engaged to an accomplished young lady. 
Her brother, a dashing officer in the army, and given to 
gambling, wanted some one to be his security for ^2000. 
'' It was always my misfortune," said the invalid, " to be 
of a soft and yielding nature, and I at last consented. 
The money was not forthcoming, neither could I pay it. 
As a ruined man, I could not lift up my head in the 



no A WISE RESOLUTION. 

Parliament House, and the lady to whom I hoped to be 
married broke off the engagement, and I never saw her 
again. After spending some time in the country in a 
moping melancholy way, I came to London nearly thirty 
years ago." Then after mentioning how, through the 
late Mr. Lockhart, he had obtained literary employment, 
amongst other things publishing a romance, and for a 
considerable time editing a magazine, in these latter 
years he had been engaged on a long-projected dictionary, 
of the Bible : ** for although I had no real religion, I 
wished to have it. I had a good mother, and I had seen 
pious people in my youth, and I hoped that by being 
always engaged about the Bible, I might, some time or 
other, be brought under its saving influence. I spent six 
years compiling that dictionary, and it was quite a labour 
of love : but I cannot say that it answered the more 
important purpose ; for in the literary part of my task I 
got so absorbed as to have no time for the spiritual." The 
manuscript, however, was lost. " I was paralysed. At 
sixty years I could not begin again. The sun of my exist- 
ence had gone down, and neither object was accomplished. 
I was not to be allowed to publish a book which I thought 
readers of the Bible would welcome, and I had failed 
to find for myself the pearl of great price. I seemed like 
one bewitched. In order to earn a crust of bread, I 
have sat down on a summers morning, intending to 
write a story for the magazines, and I have folded the 
paper and dipped the pen and held it In my fingers till 



A WISE RESOLUTION, in 

it dried ; and I have dipped it again, hoping that the 
thought would come, and gone on in this way till the 
sun went down, without ever marking the paper. Then 
I grew so weak that I could not come up these stairs 
except on my hands and feet, and by-and-by I could 
not come up at all : and for the last three weeks I have 
not left this bed, and now they tell me I am dying." 
Then he burst into tears as he told how he had often 
come to our own and other churches, and been " almost 
persuaded " to close with Christ ; but he did not tell what 
had hindered. From other sources we learned that there 
were besetting sins which kept him back, and from which 
even for his soul's salvation he could never break away. 
So there for many years he had stood spell-bound on 
Balaam's pinnacle, envying the righteous, but never joining 
their company : a prodigal who knew about the Father's 
house, but whose ''soft and yielding nature" after arising 
always sat down again ; an example of that remissness 
which lets slip life's long opportunity, perpetually pro- 
mising that some future day shall be the day of decision, 
till at last in the shadow of death the last gleam of hope 
disappears from Its eyes. 

So you who are still the prodigal, in this lucid inter- 
val be entreated, and at once arise. Take leave of every 
sin : especially in strength of God's own giving flee 
away from the sin which more easily besets you. And 
go to God. It is the reign of grace. You are still in 
the world where pardon may be found. God has not 



112 A WISE RESOLUTION. 

let you go. He has not forgotten you. It is His voice 
which calls you. It is His Spirit which is striving with 
your spirit. Notwithstanding all that you have done, He 
has not yet cast you off for ever. The cord of His love 
has still hold of you — that cord of compassion, over- 
strained, ever-lengthening, which you are doing the 
utmost to sever. Oh, yield at last to God's mercy, and let 
these bands of love draw you home ! 

And take with you words. " Father, I have sinned 
against heaven and before thee. A rebel and a runaway, 
I am no more worthy to be called thy child. With a 
heart so depraved, dare I hope that a holy God can have 
any pleasure in me ? and after the life I have led may I 
look for forgiveness ? But with God there is mercy, and 
although utterly unworthy, I come to thee in the name of 
that beloved Son who alway pleased the Father, and who 
came on the Father's behalf to seek and to save that which 
was lost. I believe the faithful saying. Lord Jesus, who 
didst come into the world to save sinners, save me. God 
and Father of our Lord Jesus, magnify the riches of thy 
grace and the merits of thy dear Son ; pity and pardon 
me. Make me as one of thy hired servants. Weary of 
wandering, take me into thy house. Weary of self-pleas- 
ing, let me taste the blessedness of new obedience. Other 
lords have had dominion over me : henceforth let me be 
called by Thy name." 



A HAPPY MEETING. 



But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and 
ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him. And the son said unto him, Father, 
I have sinned against heaven, and in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be 
called thy son. But the father said to his servants. Bring forth the best robe, and 
put it on him ; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet : and bring 
hither the fatted calf, and kill it ; and let us eat and be merry : for this my son 
was dead, and is alive again ; he was lost, and is found." — Luke xv. 20-24. 




MIS FATHER RAN, AND FELL ON HIS NECK, AND KLSSED HIM. 



A HAPPY MEETING. 



> ♦♦♦ < 



To the mediation of the Lord Jesus we owe all our 
hopes and all our happiness. Including, as it does, satis- 
faction for sin, a matchless exhibition of Divine compas- 
sion, and the introduction into our fallen world of that 
celestial energy which raises to a new and noble life those 
who were dead in trespasses ; it has not only removed 
every barrier in the way of the transgressor s return, but 
has made the path of life so open and attractive, that the 
most simple have found it, the most wayward have been 
induced to enter, the feeblest have been carried through. 

In that mediation so pre-eminent is the work of 
atonement that in the eye of many a reverent beholder 
it has left small space for other objects, even as it has 
left no need for farther manifestations; and with the im- 
patience of gratitude, with the intolerance of an absorbing 
affection, they denounce, as beside the purpose, all teaching 
which has not for its theme express and exclusive " Christ 
crucified." 

But right and true as is that sense of sin which 
nothing can relieve except " the blood of sprinkling," and 
glorious as shines the cross in the forefront of the gospel, 



ii6 A HAPPY MEETING, 

it is no honour to the Lord Jesus, and it is an injury to 
ourselves, to forget the great lesson of His life, or ignore 
those other scriptures, without whose light a darkness 
deeper than was over all the land from the sixth hour 
even unto the ninth, would still encircle Calvar)^. 

As mediator the Lord Jesus was the manifestation 
of God. The Divine Son, dwelling in the bosom of 
Deity, He plainly showed the Father.* Not only did He 
bring the Father's message, but on the great axiom " I 
and the Father are One," here in the midst of men He 
lived out the Father's life, the Father's truth, and tender- 
ness, and love. In Moses the law — the sanctity — had 
come already, but the graciousness of God came in Jesus 
Christ ;t and in all things like-minded, the very feelings 
and dispositions of the Father shone in His countenance 
and breathed in His accents, surrounding His person with 
a sacred attraction, and with a winsome authority inspiring 
His words : so that when to the heavy-laden He said, 
" Come unto me," we know that with like " grace and 
truth " the Father invites us : so that when on the cross 
He exclaimed, '' Father, forgive," we know that the 
prayer was addressed not to a Deity distant, inexorable, 
hostile, but to that God who so loved the world that He 
gave his Son, and who, in order to answer the prayer 
in a righteous forgiveness, had surrendered the Best- 
beloved to this sorrow. 

What, then, is the Divine disposition toward sinners 
* I Tim. iii. i6 ; Heb. i. 2 ; John i. 18, xiv. 9. t John i. 17. 



A HAPPY MEETING, 117 

here on earth ? Assuming God's infinite purity, how far 
is He ready to pardon ? Acknowledging that there is 
but one sacrifice for sins, what is the extent of the Divine 
propitiousness ? Viewed in the Hght of the Incarnate 
Sufferer, what is the language of the cross ? Now that 
I would fain break off my sinful life, and give myself to 
God, how soon and on what terms may I hope for 
acceptance ? Must I first prove my sincerity by a long 
purgation ? or may I come as I am ? Must I do some- 
thing to mitigate the Divine displeasure? or already 
reconciled in His Son, is it so that God actually waits 
to be gracious ? 

To such questions, although not a formal reply, this 
parable is an abundant answer. 

It was near the close of Christ's ministry, and a 
characteristic company had assembled. They were 
'' publicans and sinners." Attracted by that strange 
fascination which drew towards Infinite Purity self- 
conscious pollution, many such had by this time sought 
out the Saviour;* and by that wonderful word, " Thy sins 

* " Christ, standing here for us as the representation and revelation 
of this Divine love, tells us that whilst it is not caused by us, but comes 
from the nature of God, it is not turned away by our sins. ' This man, 
if He were a prophet, would have known who and what manner of 
woman this is that toucheth Him,' says the unloving and self-righteous 
heart, ' for she is a sinner.' Ah ! there is nothing more beautiful than 
the difference between the thought about sinful creatures which is 
natural to a holy being, and the thought about sinful creatures which is 
natural to a self-righteous being. The one is all contempt ; the other 
all pity." — Sermons^ by A. Maclaren, p. n- 



ii8 A HAPPY MEETING. 

be forgiven thee," dissolved into brokenheartedness, and 
made to hunger after righteousness, they clung to that 
society which promised to fulfil their aspirations. And 
now that before His last journey to Jerusalem a number 
of them had once more gathered around Him, the 
publicans and sinners drew near, and outside the throng, 
separate and self-respecting, stood the Scribes and 
Pharisees. As they surveyed the inner circle, with its 
rags, with its disreputable characters, wdth its wild faces 
still carrying signs of former ruffianism, they marvelled ; 
and as rapt looks and tear-filled eyes were met by gentle 
words and the expansive sunshine of a gratified benefi- 
cence, they could not comprehend the manifest affinity 
which drew together the Great Teacher and the refuse 
of Galilean society : " This man receiveth sinners and 
eateth with them." To meet this natural feeling — for 
the feeling must be natural : taken up and passed on 
by decent reputable people, the murmur which the Phari- 
sees set up has lasted for eighteen hundred years — the 
Lord Jesus spake three parables. They were an argu- 
ment from analogy. As against the feeling of Phari- 
saism, they appealed to the instincts of mankind ; and of 
the last of the series the purport has thus been given : — 
" In my Father's eyes, these sinners, with whom you 
say I associate too freely, are not what they are in yours. 
You regard them as outcasts ; — He would have them to 
be sons. He looks upon them as lost children whom He 
would fain recover to Himself His purpose is that I, the 



A HAPPY MEE TING. 1 1 9 

son of his love, should be the first-born among many 
brethren. And it is among these sinners that I am to 
find my brethren. These sinners, each and all of them, 
my Father longs to embrace, as any father worthy of the 
name would embrace a long-estranged child coming back 
to him again. He has sent me to seek and save them ; 
— to reveal him to them as a Father, waiting to welcome 
them as sons. How think ye ? Do I best carry out my 
Father's purpose by treating them after the manner you 
would have me treat them, — as the offscouring of the 
earth, — or by treating them as my Father s children and 
my brethren ? — so treating them all, including the very 
vilest of them — even those who have sunk almost to the 
level of the hungry wallowing swine ? . . . Thus viewed, 
the parable warrants the widest and most unrestricted 
proclamation of the fatherhood of God as now, in his Son, 
brought within the reach of all, — to be pressed on the 
acceptance of all, — with the strongest possible assurance 
that all are welcome, freely welcome, to have the full en- 
joyment of all that is implied in it, if they will, — when 
they will."''^' 

To which we only add that in as far as they are a 
disclosure of the Divine disposition towards the sinner, 
this and the two companion parables are pervaded by one 
principle. There are some seekers — yes, and finders — 
who have not first been losers. The merchantman seeks 
for goodly pearls, and finds one of transcendent value : the 
* Candlish on the Fatherhood of God^ 2d edition, pp. 199, 200. 



120 A HAPPY MEETING, 

farmer seeks for nothing, but sauntering through his field 
or upturning the soil, he stumbles on a treasure ; and 
both are delighted ; both are filled with the utmost glee . 
in this sudden access of fortune. Without ever having 
lost, they have found. But here is a shepherd far out in 
the desert. Looking anxiously for footprints, listening 
for anything like a cry from thorny copse or caverned 
vale, brushing the perspiration from his brow, and 
when ready to give up roused to fresh effort by a little 
flock of wool suspended from that trailing brier : it is of 
no use to tell him that he has five score at home quite as 
good as the wanderer ; nor would you altogether cure his 
sorrow though from your own fold you offered the best 
equivalent : for this one was his own ; he knew it by its 
name ; it used to go out and in and follow him : and it is 
only in the late evening, as you meet him with the weary 
truant on his shoulder, that he calls out, " Rejoice with 
me : I have found my sheep which was lost." Much the 
same with a lost piece of money, still more anxious is 
the search for a lost child, and matchless is the joy in his 
recovery. When not long ago the three little children 
were lost in the Australian wilderness, you remember 
how sympathy brought all the neighbours to the search — 
how every spot of softer earth, how every tuft of grass, 
was questioned for its tale ; and how, without ever count- 
ing the cost, or grudging the interruption of their own 
affairs, the gallant men could not leave the track as 
long as a ray of hope remained. But who can conceive 



A HAPPY MEETING. 121 

parental anguish as day after day of that dreary week 
passed on, and the bread was bitter because they could 
not share it with their famished offspring away in the 
hungry scrub, and sleep was terrible, because each new 
waking revealed the empty cribs or the cold silent sky ? 
And who can paint the rapture as the final night dis- 
closed them nestled under the over-arching broom, 
beneath the feathers of the Almighty, and the faint 
" Father !" from the first who waked assured their earthly 
sire that he had children still ? 

These are the sentiments and experiences to which 
the Saviour appeals. To alight on a pearl or piece of 
money is always agreeable ; but if it was one that you 
had lost, the anxiety of the search gives a peculiar zest 
to the discovery. If there was joy in the household when 
it was said, " There is a son born into the world," — in 
after years should he be stolen from the threshold, or 
should he wander away, proportionate to the dismay 
created by his disappearance and the sorrow with which 
he has been sought, will be the rapture with which loyal 
retainership shouts the news of his return and the awful 
joy with which affection clasps him in its arms. So here, 
with amazing condescension, Christ represents Himself 
and the Father as '' seeking that which was lost." True, 
the sheep may have lost itself : the prodigal may have 
shown vile ingratitude and done very shamefully in going 
away : but still, to the shepherd it is a grief to lose his 
sheep ; to the parent it is a grief to lose his child ; to God 



122 A HAPPY MEETING. 

it Is a grief to lose the soul made after His own image, 
and in which He rejoiced with a Creators complacency 
and more than a parent's tenderness ; and because He 
is a loser, the Most High becomes a seeker. Into the far 
country His love follows the elect soul, and the embrace 
of a joyful forgiveness awaits the returning wanderer. 

What can be more encouraging ? If you have led a 
sinful life, and are now ashamed and weary of it, where- 
soever else you are welcomed or repulsed, if you arise and 
go to God He will receive you graciously and will abun- 
dantly pardon. All His assurances are to the same 
affecting tenor. "He is long-suffering, not willing that 
any should perish." '' As I live, saith the Lord God, I 
have no pleasure In the death of the wicked, but that the 
wicked turn from his way and live. Turn ye, turn ye 
from your evil ways.'' And here He is represented as 
the merciful Father whose pity survives the longest pro- 
vocation, and whose love is such that w^hen the profligate 
at last returns no high-born revulsion hinders, but at once 
He presses the tattered swineherd to His bosom. Such 
is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus, and If you are 
wise you will let no cold suspicions or subtle casuistry 
cheat you out of the strong consolation. You cannot err 
in believing what the Lord Jesus says ; you cannot err in 
doing as He directs. Be assured that God ''is as kindly 
disposed as In this parable He is represented to be. The 
calls. Invitations, promises which He has given us in the 
gospel, mean the utmost of what they express ; and God 



A HAPPY MEETING. 123 

IS as earnestly desirous that sinners should return to Him, 
and as much pleased when they actually return, as the 
strongest language of the gospel declares.""' 

True : God is infinitely holy, and sin is His abhor- 
rence. But the great sin is departure from the living 
God, and this never ceases till once you return. And if 
you yourself long to be holy, it is in forgiveness that the 
fresh start, the new obedience, begins : if you would escape 
from the bondage of corruption, you must retreat into the 
home of God and gain the glorious liberty of His children. 

True : God Is holy, but that will not hinder His re- 
ceiving you. Holiness means the highest form of all 
excellence, and every excellence in completest harmony ; 
and now that, through the satisfaction of the Saviour, 
there is In the Divine truth and rectitude no obstacle to 
the justifying of the ungodly, to Holiness itself it is a joy 
to put away sin and pass by the remnant of transgression. 
In the condemnation of the offender sin is punished ; but 
it Is only In the salvation of the sinner that sin is de- 
stroyed. And as it was in order to destroy the devil's 
destruction that the Son of God was manifested, in every 
soul which is restored into the paths of righteousness an 
incalculable career of wickedness Is cut short, and a joy 
unspeakable is given to that holy Saviour who. In cancelled 
guilt and arrested evil, sees the travail of His soul. 
Therefore fear not to make the grand experiment ; cast 
yourself on the grace of God In Jesus Christ, and you 
* D wight's Sermons, vol. i. p. 89. 



124 A HAPPY MEETING. 

will find that there is no pity like the compassion of 
Infinite Purity. You will find that there is no love like 
God's own charity — that love omnipotent which, in saving 
a soul from death, not only covers but annihilates the 
multitude of sins. And if to a guilty conscience there is 
no holdfast so firm as the horns of God's altar, now that 
a new and living way has thrown it open, you will find 
that for a sin-burdened spirit there is no asylum so kindly, 
so secure, so inviting, as the very Holy of Holies. 

Therefore we say again : Take with you words, and 
return to the Lord. Say exactly what you feel. If you 
are not prepared to part with all sin, you are no penitent ; 
you are still the prodigal. But if your sin is your sorrow, 
let neither past evil nor present imperfection prevent 
your return. The younger son was still " a great way 
off" when the Father saw him, and v/as still in his rags 
when that Father kissed him. And whilst you cannot 
feel too keenly, do not wait for feeling. It is right to be 
lowly. To " blush and be confounded " before God, to 
" weep and be in bitterness," is no more than the feeling 
which guilt should awaken ; and till you have sought and 
found forgiveness, you do well to be anxious. As 
Bunyan felt after his conscience awoke, when he saw 
people much cast down about the loss of wealth or near 
relations : " Lord, what ado is here about such little 
things ! if they so labour after, and shed so many tears 
for the things of this present life, how am I to be be- 
moaned, pitied, and prayed for 1 My soul is dying, my 



A HAPPY MEETING. 125 

soul is damning. Were my soul but In a good condition, 
how rich would I esteem myself, though blessed but with 
bread and water." No sorrow for the past can be too 
poignant ; but do not wait for that sorrow. If the pro- 
digal had not arisen till he was satisfied with his own 
repentance, he would have died in the far country. But 
the tears which do not flow from the gaunt eyes of famine, 
will come unbidden at the feast of fat things ; and the 
fountains of the great deep, which freeze in the winter of 
remoteness and estrangement, will break up and brim 
over in the sunshine of Mercy. The word which you 
take, be it what it may, '' Father, I have sinned, and am 
no more worthy to be called thy son : " 

" Dear Lord, I ask no crown from Thee, 
No robe with rich perfume ; 
The meanest place will do for me, 
And in the lowest room :" 

''Take away iniquity, and receive me graciously;" what- 
soever be the word, let it be a true one, and swifter than 
your return will be the footsteps of forthcoming pardon ; 
and great as may be your own joy in rescuing and 
restoring grace, no less will be the joy in heaven over 
your repentance. 

The relation which the Most High sustains to his 
intelligent and accountable creatures is too comprehensive 
and too intimate to be perfectly imaged by any earthly 
tie ; but in the relation which runs through this parable 



126 A HAPPY MEETING. 

it finds Its nearest equivalent. And what amongst our- 
selves is fatherhood ? It is that relation which identifies 
greatness with littleness ; which makes it quite natural 
that the arm which wields the battle-sword should gently 
rock the sleeping babe ; which secures from contempt the 
master of sentences, the sage, the orator, though he babble 
idle rhymes in his infant's ear. It is that relation which 
lives in the loved one's joy or honour, and which is 
wounded in his grief or his disgrace ; which feels no pride 
like a son's promotion, and which, gazing at the blood- 
stained garment, cries, ''It is my son's coat ! an evil beast 
hath devoured him ; I will go down to him in the grave 
sorrowing;" but which would rather that the evil beast 
had devoured him, than that he should live to blight his 
principles or forfeit a virtuous fame. It is that relation 
amongst men which toils and denies itself, and does not 
grudge the long journeys and the sleepless nights which 
enable the father to lay up for the children ; and both in 
heaven and earth, it is that relation which delights in 
being trusted, and which desires to be loved in return ; 
which cannot be asked too many favours, or be entrusted 
with too many confidences ; which seeks one gift only, 
" My son, give me thine heart," and hears no language 
more pleasing than, " My Father, thou art the guide of 
my youth. Father, forgive my trespasses, and give me 
this day my daily bread." 

Wonderful is parental affection, and wonderful the 
love of God. " Like as a father pitieth his children, so the 



A HAPPY MEETING. 127 

Lord pitieth them that fear him." '' Like as a Father;" 
but how is that ? You see yonder dusky tents along the 
stream, and knots of cattle grazing on the neighbouring 
hills ; but the chieftain stays at home. In the cradle lies 
the babe whom a foster-mother is bringing up ; for his 
own mother died on the day when he was born : and 
hand-in-hand with his widowed sire walks a little boy, 
full of love, full of notions bright and strange, asking 
hard questions, telling dreams : till a sudden change 
comes across the scene, and in the effort to be a play- 
mate to Rachel's little son, for a moment the patriarch 
forgets his cares and griefs, and, as men would say, 
his dignity. How is it that a father pitieth his child- 
ren ? An old king is seated at the city gate. Not 
far away a battle is going forward — a battle on which 
hangs the monarch's crown, perhaps his very life. And 
there is panic through the town — the helpless running to 
and fro and the fearful looking forth of those who think 
they already see their houses in the flames and red 
slaughter rushing through the streets. But now, posting 
towards the city, are seen the litde clouds — the dust of 
separate couriers — and all rush to hear the tidings. "All's 
well !" exclaims the first ; '' Victory ! " shouts the second ; 
but with fierce impatience demands the monarch, ''Is 
the young man Absalom safe ?" and transfixed by the 
fatal truth, in his cry of anguish the cheers of exulta- 
tion suddenly subside, and as he staggers up to his 
solitary chamber, the joyous crowd fall silent, and even 



128 A HAPPY MEETING, 

the conquerors, when they at last return, like the per- 
petrators of a crime slink through the gate crest-fallen. 
How is it that a father pitieth his children ? For long 
there has been only one son at home, and you might sup- 
pose there never had been more than one: all is so com- 
plete and orderly, and the new-come servants and the 
neighbours never speak of any other. But along the 
high-road there is this instant travelling a gaunt and hag- 
gard figure ; his filthy tattered clothing showing little 
trace of bygone foppery, and in his looks not much to be- 
token gentle breeding : so shabby and so reprobate, that- 
those who pity common beggars shake the head or slam 
the door on this one. But though the dogs bark at him, 
and charity turns away from him ; though the meanest 
hut rejects him, and though the passengers scowl at his 
petitions, one heart awaits him, and keeps for him the 
original compartment warm, ample, and unfilled. Yonder, 
as he has surmounted the summit of the hill, and is gazing 
down on the long-forsaken homestead, and hesitating 
whether he may venture nearer, what quick eye is that 
which has recognised him a great way off, and what eager 
step is this which runs so fast to meet him ? and who is 
this that in the folds of his kingly mantle hides the rag- 
ged wanderer, and clasps him to his bosom, and weeps 
upon his neck the tears of enraptured affection, and cuts 
short his confession with a call for the best robe and a 
command for instant festival ? Oh, what a love is that 
which the heavenly Father hath unto His children ! 



THE BEST ROBE 



K 



But the father said to his servants, Bring forth the best robe, and put it on him 
and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet." — LuKE xv. 2.2. 




BRING FORTH THE BEST ROBE AND PUT IT ON HIM; AND PUT A RING 
ON HIS HAND, AND SHOES ON HIS FEE'l". 



THE BEST ROBE. 



From the excellent glory came the voice " This is my 
beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye Him. 
Obedient to that voice we listen to the Lord Jesus, and 
we learn the mind of God. We learn His graciousness, 
His forgivingness. His all-comprehending care and kind- 
ness ; and taken by the hand we are introduced into His 
presence, and are taught to say, Abba, Father. Owing 
to our sinfulness we are very unbelieving, and therefore 
it takes a long time to learn the lesson ; but, encouraged 
by so kind an intercessor, the experiment is repeated and 
repeated, till, enriched by faith, awe ripens into filial 
reverence, and tormenting fear is cast forth by perfect 
love."' 

We obey God when we listen to Jesus ; and Jesus 
says, '' Suffer the little children to come unto me : for of 
such is the kingdom of heaven." If we ourselves have 
come to love the Saviour, it should be our great effort to 
endear Him to our children ; and the way in which He 
has taught us to think and feel about God, is the way in 
which we should try to get them to think and feel towards 
our Father who is in heaven. 

* Matt. xvii. 5, xviii. 22, vi. g; Gal. iv. 6 j i John iv. 18. 



132 THE BEST ROBE. 

The very effort will be a great blessing to ourselves. 
You who are a Christian parent will acknowledge that of 
all your educators your own children have proved the 
most influential, and you will allow that to a thoughtful 
man the true finishing school is his own family. Even 
although a preacher of the word or a doctor of divinity, 
you here find the tables turned ; and with the watch 
which you must set upon your lips, and the faultless con- 
duct you are expected to maintain, you find yourself once 
more under tutors and governors ; the solitary pupil in 
the centre of an acute and observant faculty ; a scholar 
posed by the Gamaliels at your feet ; a puzzled Solomon 
whose queen of Sheba has just descended from the 
nursery with dolls and hard questions. And it is well. 
Your turn is too abstract. With you the truths of 
Revelation are too much the propositions in a system or 
the tenets of a creed : the little child has no turn for 
abstractions ; to him these doctrines are the sayings of 
God, or they are nothing ; and rather than live in a pale 
ghost-land of dogmas, he will impersonate attributes and 
propositions ; like the apostle, will clothe in flesh and 
blood, Faith, Hope, and Charity ; like the Psalmist will 
give life to Veracity and Mercy, and be glad to see sun- 
dered friends, like Righteousness and Peace, embracing 
one another. And it is well to see truth through the limpid 
eye of childhood, before the life has gone out, before the 
glory has gone off, but just as it comes from God ; and 
in concert with such unsophisticated students it is good 



THE BEST ROBE. 133 

to open up a text and let out the fragrance and the 
sweetness which in the handHng of conventional exegetics 
are so apt to be sacrificed for the sake of the structural 
anatomy. Above all, it is well to have such an incentive 
to personal consistency. In one sense idealists, children 
are also realists ; but nominalists they never are. They 
will not mistake words for things, nor accept profession 
in lieu of practice. You are sometimes forced to say — 

" The man 
Is worthy, but so given to entertain 
Impossible plans of superhuman life. 
He sets his virtues on so raised a shelf, 
He has to mount a stool to get at them ; 
And, meantime, lives on quite the common way, 
With everybody's morals.'"^ 

In such transcendental ethics children have no faith, and 
the only lesson which impresses them is the one brought 
down to their own level — the lesson which is lived. If 
you want them to be truthful, you must never '' use light- 
ness " yourself, nor make a promise which you have no 
intention to fulfil. If you wish them to be fair and 
honourable in their transactions with one another, the 
court of appeal must judge righteous judgment and show 
no respect of persons. If you would like them not to lose 
their temper, you must keep your own. '' Walk before 
me, and be thou perfect," was God's charge to Abram ; 
and '' I will walk within my house with a perfect heart," 
was the Psalmist's resolution; and success in the one 
* Aurora Leigh, p. 216. 



134 THE BEST ROBE. 

sphere is a good test of sincerity in the other ; for next 
to the All-seeing Himself, there are no observers so per- 
spicacious and so candid as those little ones whom it is 
so woful to offend. Let therefore the living God be to 
you what you desire and pray that He should be to them : 
your fear and your dread, and yet your exceeding joy ; 
your Guardian and Guide; your Father and Friend. 

Wonderful is the teaching of the Holy Spirit. Some- 
times prospering parental effort, sometimes with small 
outward advantage in the way of example or instruction, 
in many an infant mind He has enkindled a sweet and 
most natural piety ; and although, as too often happens, 
blown out in the world's rough weather, so that for suc- 
cessive years there is nothing left but the smouldering 
wick — the smoking flax of unavailing regret and abortive 
resolutions — when the set time comes He has only to 
take the begrimed and battered lamp, and pouring in new 
oil, with benignant afflatus breathe over it, till, like an 
incorruptible seed, the feeble spark, the fiery germ, flame 
up a burning and a shining light ; whilst other and 
happier instances occur, in which the good work has ex- 
perienced no marked interruption, but the fair promise of 
childhood has strengthened into youthful piety, and manly 
decision, and mature devotion : instances like Josiah and 
Timothy, like Jeremiah and John the Baptist; instances 
like Melancthon, where, early sanctified, the clear intellect 
and calm loving heart grew equably together ; instances 
like John Livingstone, where, never having tasted aught 



THE BEST ROBE, 135 

else than that the Lord is gracious, some experience of 
His terrors had to be entreated as a favour ; instances 
like that described in the touching lines — 

" O God ! who wert my childhood's love, 
My boyhood's pure delight, 
A presence felt the livelong day, 
A welcome fear at night ; — 

I could not sleep unless Thy hand 

Were underneath my head. 
That I might kiss it, if I lay 

Wakeful upon my bed. 

And quite alone I never felt, — 

I knew that Thou wert near, 
A silence tingling in the room, 

A strangely pleasant fear. 

With age Thou grewest more divine, 

More glorious than before ; 
I feared Thee with a deeper fear. 

Because I loved Thee more." * 

Whilst such examples are a great incentive to pious 
teachers and parents, the other class may well encourage 
those who go forth to the far country and try to reclaim 
the prodigal. Even amongst those who have sinned the 
worst and sunk the lowest, there are few who cannot 
recal a better time, and not a few can recal a good and 
hopeful beginning. In one respect yours is a great ad- 
vantage. You were not born a heathen. Your child- 
hood was not a religious blank, nor was your infant 

* F. W. Faber. 



136 THE BEST ROBE. 

imagination filled with hideous pagods ; but in " the Lord 
your Shepherd," in the "gentle Jesus, meek and mild," 
you looked up and saw a Pity and Protection which it is 
still touching to remember. Although so sadly fallen, 
there was once a time when you seemed not far from the 
kingdom, and degraded though you be, you can still 
recal a father s house and the beauty of its holiness. At 
the same time, your case is very critical. Grace resisted, 
advantages abused, are but a deeper condemnation, and 
if you die impenitent and unsaved, in the day of judg- 
ment It will be more tolerable for pagans than for you. 

These latter years have been godless. They have 
been given to self-seeking and the pursuit of pleasure ; 
in the language of Scripture, they have been spent in 
" working the will of the flesh and of the mind.'^ But 
although you have forgotten God, He has not lost sight of 
you. Even amidst the riotous living His grieving eye 
has followed you, and the sore destruction, which your 
sins provoked, long-suffering grace withheld. And now 
there is in the far country a famine. Health has failed ; 
your post or employment Is lost ; a dear friend, the desire 
of your eyes, has been taken away ; and amidst the soli- 
tary musings of this desolate season, a still small voice 
keeps passing up and down the chambers of memory, 
and, in tones not unfamiliar, it recals the happier time. 
It is the voice of God. It says, '' Return, ye backsliding 
children, and I will heal your backslldlngs ; " and if you 
are wise you will at once arise and go. 



THE BEST ROBE. 137 

You would fain arise, you say, but you cannot. You 
are in the arms of a giant. You are in the grasp of a 
strong and terrible temptation, which holds you fast and 
will not let you go. You have tried to escape, but it was 
sure to rush after you like an armed man, and strike you 
down, and carry you captive once more. 

A mournful admission ! and yet, if you are in earnest, 
you need not despair. The kingdom of heaven suffereth 
violence, and the violent take it by force. When Alfieri's 
literary ambition was effectually aroused, the great 
obstacle to progress was a worthless companion. Such 
was the sorcery of this man's society, that books and 
vows withstood in vain ; and scholarship, patriotism, 
literary distinction, would have been ignobly forfeited, 
had it not been for the iron will which a noble incentive 
supplies. Chained to his desk, at least bound to his 
chair, and with his hair cropped so as to cut off com- 
munion with the fashionable world, he pursued his studies, 
and in a few weeks the frenzy was thoroughly con- 
quered. Hard was the fight, but it gained the laurel 
crown. Your aim is higher. More important interests 
cannot be conceived than those which your present in- 
fatuation imperils. Glory, honour, and immortality are 
now in your offer; God's friendship here, and eternal 
life hereafter ; and of all the wild exchanges which have 
ever been made since Esau sold the land of promise for 
a mess of pottage, yours will be the wildest, who for 
these mean and momentary delights cast away the joys 



138 THE BEST ROBE. 

of a deathless duration. Nor is there any need. For a 
hard conflict, a Hfe-or-death struggle, there may possibly 
be need ; but there is no need for surrender. Stronger 
than Satan is the Son of God, and a struggle in His 
strength is sure to prevail ; and as you would not have 
life's remainder degraded, embittered ; as you would not 
blush to meet that noble army of martyrs who resisted 
unto blood, striving against sin ; as you would not in a 
lost eternity be the derision of devils and the victim of 
ceaseless self-upbraidings, — entreat the merciful help of 
the Most High, and from this moment forward shun the 
path of your destroyer ; or should he from cunning 
ambush spring on you unawares, cry mightily to God, 
who is able to deliver, with a mind made up, that rather 
than sin it is good to suffer, it would be gain to die. 

Says another, " I have arisen ; at least I think I have. 
I would fain come to the Father, but I know not the 
way. It is now a long time since I first felt anxious 
about my state ; but although I have never missed my 
prayers, and have read the Bible and many good books, 
I do not feel as if I had made much progress. I have 
no love to God, no enjoyment of religion. I sometimes 
despair of ever getting to the Father's house, and I often 
feel as if, after all the pains I have taken, I had been only 
wandering up and down in the far country." 

All that we are told of the prodigal is, " He arose, and 
came to his father." We are not told how many days or 
weeks were spent on the way home ; but in the case of 



THE BEST ROBE. 139 

some it has proved a long and toilsome pilgrimage. 
From the moment that Augustine arose and left the 
swine-troughj it was six years before he found himself in 
the Father's house ; and fleeing from the wrath to come, 
energetic natures like Luther and Bunyan had to fight 
their path through months of toil and terror, and before 
they came to peace with God were wearied in the great- 
ness of their way. 

In such instances sovereign wisdom overruled for 
good the sharpness of the ordeal, the tedium of the 
journey; just as in the long-run it proved all the better 
for Israel that the fortnight's march from Egypt to Ca- 
naan spread out into forty years. But if the traveller 
is ignorant or wayward — if he has no clear idea of the 
route, or wastes his time in desultory episodes and 
refuges of lies — a narrow interval may yield space suffi- 
cient for a weary irksome wandering. 

And truly it is a narrow interval which divides the 
Father and the prodigal, the Saviour and the sinner. 
One day when Joseph Milner, the church historian, was 
preaching at Ferriby, near Hull, there was present in 
the audience a man fifty years of age, who had led a life 
of great and open wickedness. The. sermon was from 
the text, '' The hour is coming when all that are in their 
graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth ; they 
that have done good unto the resurrection of life, and 
they that have done evil unto the resurrection of dam- 
nation." The conscience of the old profligate was 



I40 THE BEST ROBE. 

awakened. His life had been spent in doing evil, and at 
the prospect of the coming judgment he trembled. Of 
a Saviour he never thought, for he felt that sins like his 
could never be forgiven ; and he could only wish that 
the race had been extinguished in Noah's flood, so that 
he himself had never been. Weeks passed in misery. 
He tried to repent. He tried to soften that hard heart 
of his ; but all in vain : it lay '' like a ball of iron " within 
him. At last he called on the preacher, and as well as 
he could described his feelings. Mr. Milner listened, 
and then replied : '' We are ambassadors for Christ, as 
though God did beseech you by us. In Christ's stead 
we pray you, be ye reconciled to God." He then 
added : '' I now stand in St. Paul's place, and I beg you 
to believe this invitation. I beg you to accept the 
pardon of all your sins, which Christ has purchased for 
you, and which God freely bestows on you for His 
sake." William Howard stared. " Dear sir, how can 
I believe that God should invite a sinful wretch like me 
to be reconciled to him?" and although Mr. Milner 
pointed out the passage, and explained how God's ways 
are not as our ways, he was by no means satisfied. He 
thought Mr. Milner's copy of the Bible could hardly be 
correct ; but when he went home, and in his own Testa- 
ment read the self-same words, he sank into a sort of 
swoon of blissful wonder. Here on the one side was a 
hell-deserving wretch, a horrible transgressor: there on 
the other was the God of grace opening heaven's door and 



THE BEST ROBE, 141 

inviting him to enter. That night was spent in singing 
the praises of the Saviour who had purchased his pardon, 
and the holy humble walk of his ten remaining years was 
another illustration of the truth, "■ There Is forgiveness 
with thee, that thou mayest be feared." 

Said one of our Scottish worthies, " I have seen a 
great wonder to-day. I found a woman in a state of 
nature, I saw her In a state of grace, and now she Is in a 
state of glory." Were It given to every one to apprehend 
as clearly and appropriate as eagerly the blessings within 
their reach as this poor woman to whose bed-side the 
steps of the minister were directed, there would be few 
joyless lives, few tortuous, tiring, self-repeating pilgri- 
mages. '' I am the way," says the Lord Jesus. " No 
man cometh to the Father but by me." As soon as you 
place yourself in the Saviour's hands, you are practically 
home. Faith in Christ is peace with God. 

Some people once lived in a happy isle, but for their 
misdeeds were banished. The place of their exile, how- 
ever, lay within sight of their former home. They could 
look across the channel and discern the beach, with its 
border of golden sand^ and the hills beyond, with their 
emerald slopes and cool snow-capped summits. Occa- 
sionally, too, in the stiller weather, they could hear voices 
from that land : the shout of happy playmates ; the 
tinkling tune of browsing flocks, or the mellow peal sum- 
moning to welcome worship. Their own was a land of 
emptiness. From the brackish bog sprouted a few dingy 



142 THE BEST ROBE. 

weeds, and the glairy stems, or mallows among the 
bushes, were the food of the gaunt inhabitants. Few 
had any desire to leave, or any hope of bettering their 
condition. One exception we may notice. He was a 
thoughtful character. With those deep melancholy eyes, 
which take so much for granted, and which seldom kindle 
to the fullest — for they have looked the world through 
and through, and seen an end of all perfection — glimpses 
of a noble soul could at times be caught, as it climbed to 
the window of his wan and wistful countenance. Many 
an eager glance did he direct towards the Blessed Isle. 
Fain would he reach it. One morning, on waking, it 
struck him that the opposite coast was unusually near : 
so low was the tide that perhaps he might ford it, or at 
all events swim. So down through the swamp and over 
the dry shingle he posted ; and then across the sad and 
solid sand, off which the gentle wavelets had folded, 
right athwart the wet stones and crackling fuci, where 
tiny streams of laggard water and crustaceans tumbling 
topsy-turvy in their crawling haste were trying to over- 
take the ocean : till abruptly met by the rising tide, he 
found to his dismay that, deep as was the ebb, the 
channel still was deeper. Disappointed here, he by-and- 
by bethought him of another plan. Westward of his 
dwelling the coast-line stretched away in successive cliffs 
and headlands, till it ended in a lofty promontory, which 
in its turn seemed to abut against the Happy Isle. 
Thither he made up his mind that he would take a 



THE BEST ROBE, 143 

pilgrimage. With slopes and swells, zigzags and wind- 
ings, it turned out much farther than it looked ; and 
when at last, foot-sore and staggering, he got to the 
summit, instead of a bridge to the Better Land, he found 
it a dizzy cliff, with the same relentless ocean weltering 
at its base. Baulked in this final effort, he went down 
and flung himself on the rocks and wept. It was during 
this paroxysm of vexation, that looking up he noticed a 
little boat, with whose appearance he was familiar. He 
was a little surprised to see it there, for he remembered 
that it used to ride exactly opposite his own habitation ; 
although, belonging to no one in particular, and not 
having brought any of the commodities they cared for, 
he and the other inhabitants had never paid it much 
attention. Having now nothing else to do, he looked at 
it eagerly and somewhat wonderingly. It neared him. 
It came close up to the rocks where he was seated. It 
was a beautiful boat, with snowy sail and golden prow 
and a red pennon flying. There was one on board, and 
only one. His raiment was white and glistening, and 
his features were such as could only have come from the 
Happy Isle. *' Son of man," he said, " why weepest 
thou ? " '' Because I cannot reach yonder blessed 
region." " Couldst thou trust thyself to me ? " The 
pilgrim looked, first at the little skiff and then at its 
benignant pilot, and said, " I can." With that timid Yes, 
he stepped on board, and like a sunbeam, so swift, it 
bore him away from that dismal coast ; and ere he could 



144 THE BEST ROBE, 

believe it, he was a denizen of the Happy Isle, breathing 
its immortal air ; at home amidst its loveliness, and 
numbered with its citizens. 

The happy isle is peace with God ; the blessed state 
which man when sinless occupied. The dreary land is 
the state of alienation from the living God, in which, with 
joyless acquiescence, so many are living. And the little 
skiff — the only means of passing over from the one 
region to the other — is the atonement, the intercession of 
Jesus Christ. It is not by the headland of reformation 
that you will be able to attain the peace which passeth 
understanding ; nor will you be able to ford the channel 
even when the tide of worldliness and sin runs lowest. 
Your repentance, your self-amendment, will not suffice ; 
but peace with God is a gift from God, and He who 
bought it with His blood, in the gospel brings it to your 
door. Be thankful. You cannot build your own bridge, 
nor swim the great gulf: be thankful for the transporting 
medium divinely provided and divinely sent. Be 
thankful for this ark of salvation and its friendly pilot. 
That pilot is the true Elder Brother, and to trust yourself 
to Him is to make the instant transition from the far 
country to the Father s arms. There, and in His royal 
resources, you will find amply supplied all which you this 
moment lack : the robe of a spotless righteousness ; the 
ring which tells of a restored inheritance ; and shoes, the 
badge of freedom, ''the preparation of the Gospel of 
peace," with joyful alacrity winging the feet, and enabling 
you to walk at liberty. 



THE FESTIVAL 



Bring hither the fatted calf, and kill it ; and let us eat, and be merry : for this my 
son was dead, and is alive again ; he was lost, and is found. And they began to 
be merry." — LuKE xv. 23, 24. 




FOR THIS MY SON WAS DEAD, AND IS ALIVE AGAIN, HE WAS LOST, AND 
IS FOUND. AND THEY BEGAN TO BE MERRY. 



THE FESTIVAL. 



No one acquainted with the subject will undervalue the 
light thrown on the Bible by recent research. But much 
as these latter days are Indebted to the topographer, the 
linguist, and the antiquary, when we return to the times 
of our fathers, it is gratifying to observe how seldom 
competent Intelligence and a reverential spirit have missed 
the sacred meaning. Were you taking, for example, 
any passage In the Gospels, it Is possible that some 
modern critic may have settled a jot or tittle which hung 
in doubt a hundred years ago, and modern explorers have 
elucidated facts in natural science and allusions to Eastern 
manners which were once obscure ; but with such allow- 
ance, if from our modern interpreters you go back to 
Erasmus with his plain straightforward practicalness, or 
Calvin with his penetrating decisive insight, or Grotius 
with his rich scholarship and capacious intellect, you will 
be surprised to find how little that is "profitable for 
doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for Instruction in 
righteousness," was hid from predecessors as able as our- 
selves, as studious, and perhaps on the whole as free from 
prejudice. 



148 THE FESTIVAL. 

Half-way between the Reformation and the present 
time lived Matthew Henry. In one of the last summers 
of Queen Anne, and when Addison was writing Spectators 
or Guardians, Henry was expounding the parable of the 
Prodigal Son ;* and we may quote, somewhat condensed, 
his remarks on this passage. Of course they are quaint 
and homely. The polished ease of Kensington had not 
penetrated to the meeting-house in Hackney, and we 
rather like the kindly humour which animates the trim 
precision of the Puritan, and^gives it an effect like wit. 
Indeed, as in the kindred instances of Donne and Joseph 
Hall and Thomas Fuller, we own a relish for that 
sprightly wisdom which lightens as it indicates the labour 
of love ; and for the devout sagacity of our expositor 
we can desire no more appropriate vehicle than his own 
sententious playfulness. 

"He came home in rags, and his father not only 
clothed but adorned him. He said to the servants, who 
all attended their master. Bring forth the best robe. The 
worst old clothes in the house might have served, and had 
been good enough for him ; but the father calls not for a 
coat, but for a robe, the garment of princes : the ' first 
robe' — so it may be read — the robe he wore before he ran 

* Henry's exposition of Luke was begun March 17 13, and finished 
on the loth of July. That day was the Friday on which Addison 
pubHshed the story of a French gentleman, which forms No. 104 of the 
Guardian. The reader need scarcely be reminded that the Guardian 
was a sort of parenthesis in the Spectator, which was resumed after the 
cessation of the former. 



THE FESTIVAL. 149 

his ramble.* Bring hither that robe and put it on him ; 
he shall be ashamed to wear it, and think it ill becomes 
him, who comes home in such a dirty pickle ; but 
'put it on him/ And 'put a ring on his hand;' a 
signet-ring, with the arms of the family, in token of his 
being owned as a branch of the family. Rich people 
wore rings, and his father hereby signified that, though 
he had spent one portion, yet upon his repentance he 
intended him another. He came home barefoot, his feet 
perhaps sore with travel, and therefore * put shoes on his 

* This is the rendering of the Vulgate, making (srohri)) rnv -Tr^dorTiv = 
d^^a!av, the " first " or " former " robe, the robe he used to wear. But 
as Alford justly says, " This would not be consistent with the former 
part of the parable, in which he was not turned out with any disgrace, 
but left as a son and of his own accord." Here the remarks are 
excellent of Archbishop Trench, whose book, with Greswell's, is for 
English readers the great repertory of " things new and old " on this 
and all the parables. After referring to Zech. iii. 4, he proceeds : 
" These words (' Behold, I have caused thine iniquity to pass from 
thee ') brought to bear on the passage before us, make it, I think, more 
probable that, by this bringing out of the best robe, and putting it upon 
him, is especially signified that act of God, which, considered on its 
negative side, is a release from condemnation, a causing of the sinner's 
iniquity to pass from him, — on its positive side, is an imputation to him 
of the merits and righteousness of his Lord" (Isaiah Ixi. 10. Trench 
On the Parables, eighth edition, p. 41 1). " The <sro\y\ 'tt^mtt] denotes the 
righteousness of God, Rev. iii. 18; vii. 13 ; xix. 8. The ^axruX/ov, the 
signet-ring, denotes the seal of the Spirit, the testimony that a man 
belongs to God; the Wo^^^^ara (Eph. vi. 15) denotes the power of 
walking in the way of God. The entertainment made ready points to 
the huTi^vov to which the ^aatXiia rov ©sou is often compared." — Olshausen 
{Clark's Library), vol. iii. 42. 



ISO THE FESTIVAL, 

feet,' to make him easy. He would have thought it 
sufficient, and been very thankful, if his father had but 
taken notice of him, and bade him go to the kitchen and 
get his dinner with the servants ; but God doth for those 
who return to their duty, and cast themselves upon his 
mercy, abundantly above what they are able to ask or 
think . . and the fatted calf can never be better bestowed." 

The feast which now took place — to use the words of 
one whose genial wisdom has uttered many things in the 
spirit and power of Matthew Henry — denotes " the joy 
of a forgiving God over a forgiven man, and the joy of a 
forgiven man in a forgiving God." '" The one is a gra- 
cious revelation, the other is a blessed experience, and 
each reacts upon the other. To a forth-going affection- 
ate nature it is a joy to be trusted ; to a benevolent 
nature it is a joy to diffuse happiness ; to a holy nature 
it is a joy to create righteousness and arrest evil ; and in 
the case of every soul that is saved such is the joy of 
God. And whilst over the son who was dead but who 
now lives again. He lavishes the riches of His grace, 
responsive to heaven's happiness there is often shed 
through the believing soul a joy unspeakable, a peace 
which passeth understanding. 

There can be no greater blessedness than his who 

apprehends the love of God. Mr. Charles of Bala, the 

founder of adult schools in Wales, and the originator of 

the Bible Society, was only eighteen when he heard the 

* Arnot On the Parables^ p. 440. 



THE FESTIVAL. 151 

sermon which first disclosed to him the way of Hfe and 
imparted to his bright and beneficent career the initial 
impulse. " Ever since that happy day," he says, " I have 
lived in a new heaven and a new earth. The change 
which a blind man, who receives his sight, experiences, 
does not exceed the change which at that time I expe- 
rienced in my mind. It was then that I was first 
convinced of the sin of unbelief, or of entertaining 
narrow, contracted, and hard thoughts of the Almighty. 
I had such a view of Christ as our High Priest, of his 
love, compassion, power, and all-sufficiency, as filled 
my soul with astonishment ; with joy unspeakable and 
full of glory." No doubt there are natures not emo- 
tional, and there are others who live in a foggy atmo- 
sphere and seldom enjoy a feast of sunshine. Even those 
to whom, as converts suddenly awakened or prodigals 
remarkably restored, the transition is most striking, 
cannot count on a life-time of rapture. From the very 
Mount of Transfiguration, although it was ''good to be 
there," it was needful to descend ; and although the 
younger son had never in his existence known an even- 
ing like this, the music and dancing could not last for 
ever. Within they were " merry," but already murmurs 
were heard outside ; and even although there had been 
no disagreeable inmate to propitiate, the morrow would 
bring homely duties and grave realities, nor could every 
day conclude with a fatted calf 

There are few, even among Christians, to whom the 



152 THE FESTIVAL. 

whole of life is festival. Still it is a great advantage, if 
you have a marked and memorable time in your spiritual 
history : a day of decision, a day when first you owned 
the claims of Christ, or gave yourself to God : a book, 
a sermon, a communion, an interview when your heart 
burned : some happy hour, which has now become a 
holy memory. Fain would we hope that the perusal of 
these pages may be made to some reader such a land- 
mark ; or should they fall into the hands of any one who 
is trying to begin the Christian life, may the Holy Spirit 
speak through them the word in season ! 

One of the most earnest men whom we have ever 
known was the late Mr. James of Birmingham. With 
a frequent feeling that he had not long to live, his sermons 
were always practical and often solemnly urgent, and 
when thrown into the society of others he was usually 
trying to do good. He was greatly honoured. Commenc- 
ing his ministry with forty communicants, and a congrega- 
tion of two hundred hearers, he ended with nearly a 
thousand church-members, and an audience of twice that 
number. Of his Anxious Inquirer half-a-million of copies 
have been circulated, and the instances cannot be counted 
of those whom it has led to the Saviour. On the last 
Sabbath of his life he preached that gospel which it had 
been the delight of half-a-century to proclaim, and on the 
Friday following he wrote to Mr. Birrell, forwarding some 
recollections of Knill the missionary. " During the last 
week I had a considerable accession of disease, and am 



THE FESTIVAL, 153 

now quite laid aside, so that I look upon it as the 
beginning of the end. I think it probable that with 
these few notes on dear Knill's life and labours, I shall 
lay down my pen, which has written much ; would God 
it had written better ! But while I say this, I am not 
without hope — yea, I may add conviction — that it has 
written usefully. In some humble degree, I have aimed 
at usefulness both in my preaching and writing, and God 
has, to an amount which utterly astonishes and almost 
overwhelms me, given me what I sought. It seems a 
daring and almost presumptuous expression, but with a 
proper qualification it is a true one — that usefulness is 
within the reach of us all. The man who intensely desires 
to be useful, and takes the proper means, will be useful. 
God will not withhold His grace from such desires and 
such labours. O my brother, how delightful is it, not- 
withstanding the humbling and sorrowful consciousness 
of defects and sins, to look back upon a life spent for 
Christ. I thank a sovereign God, I am not without 
some degree of this." Next morning he was absent from 
the body, and death had set his seal on the testimony 
that the man is sure to be useful who has the intense 
desire, and who takes the proper means. 

Usefulness is your desire. God has been very kind 
to you. You have not only received a free forgiveness, 
but the spirit of adoption. With the ring on your finger 
reminding you of your Father's love, you would like to be 
engaged in your Father s business ; and with the shoes 



154 THE FESTIVAL., 

on your feet, protecting from injury and making rough 
places smooth, you can go wherever God gives an errand. 
What that errand may be, if you wait on the Lord 
His word and providence will in due time indicate. For 
men of zeal and energy there is continual need in the 
Christian ministry; and with openings unprecedented 
since the apostolic age, for a cheerful warm-hearted 
worker there is no field like foreign missions. Even 
within the limits of many a secular vocation there is 
ample scope for Christian philanthropy. If a merchant, 
you may befriend a lad of good promise, and find for 
him a safe and appropriate opening. If a physician, you 
may not only save precious lives and mitigate a vast 
amount of human misery, but, treading in the footsteps 
of the Great Physician, by the word in season you may 
heal diseases sorer and more disastrous than any which 
afflict the body. Law itself may do homage to the 
gospel, and taking up the cause of the oppressed, or 
mediating betwixt litigious neighbours, you will find, 
" Blessed is he that considereth the poor ; " " Blessed are 
the peace-makers." If honestly earned, even gold may 
be so consecrated as never to become filthy lucre ; and 
as it simmers on the cottage hob or sings in the kettle of 
the lonely sempstress — as it strikes the thankful key in the 
widow's heart, or comes out in the festive chorus of the 
Ragged School, " Oh, that will be joyful, joyful, joyful ! " 
you will be regaled with better music than if you had 
bought a season ticket at the opera. 



THE FESTIVAL. 155 

Amongst the trees of the wood there is a vast 
variety : the sturdy oak, the flexile willow ; the solid 
maple, the graceful ash ; the terraced cedar with cones 
uprising through each grassy-looking lawn of tender 
leafery, the larch, in lieu of bells, hanging its scarlet 
blossoms from every pointed arch of its green pagoda ; 
the stiff stout holly disdainful of the breeze, the fidgety 
aspen all in a flutter at the faintest sigh ; the spacious 
chestnut enclasping the glebe in its bountiful branches, 
the strict solemn cypress with every appressed twiglet 
pointing straight up to heaven. As with the form, so 
with the bark or the timber : the ebony sinking like 
stone, the cork on the crest of the billow ; the elder so 
soft and spongy, the box in its firm structure retentive 
of the finest engraving; the homely deal, the thyine- 
veneer emulating the spots of the panther or the plumes 
of the peacock : — beautiful some, but useful all, and not 
to be interchanged with advantage. An ashen bow 
would be no better than a yew-tree lance ; you do not 
choose the fir for the prince's table ; and even England's 
oak would make a sorry mast for " some great ammiral." 

Through all God's kingdoms we trace the like variety, 
and still we find It when we rise to the minds of men. 
There Is endless diversity In their nature, and for every 
form and style abundant use ; and it Is best when they 
are not transposed. Melancthon would have made a 
poor substitute for Luther ; but the absence of Melanc- 
thon would have left it a poorer Reformation. Great as 



156 THE FESTIVAL. 

was the invention of the Sunday school, it was not re- 
vealed to Bishop Butler, but was reserved for Robert 
Raikes ; and yet if the former had not written the 
Analogy, it may be doubted if the latter could have 
supplied the desideratum. And although Jeremy Taylor 
and John Bunyan had each a fine fancy, the world is now 
agreed that if they had changed places, they could have 
made it no better : we are quite content with the Pil- 
grim of the one, and the Golden Grove of the other. 

Sanguine and non-sympathetic natures insist that 
everyone, if he likes, may do the things which they not 
only do, but do so easily. To a man like Lord Thurlow, 
coarse and contemptuous of mankind, it must have been 
a simple amazement when his kinsman Cowper resigned 
the clerkship of the Lords, because he had not courage 
to read aloud minutes and petitions ; but, although the 
brazen chancellor was a stranger to all trepidation, and it 
would have cost him no effort to read his own rhymes 
to the peers of Parnassus, it may be questioned if, 
even to secure the Great Seal, he could have written 
the "Task" or **John Gilpin." And, although nothing 
can be more true than that talents increase by trading, 
it is also true that their right investment — the sort of 
trade best suited to each merchantman — is indicated by 
the natural turn or faculty ; and we shall serve God and 
our generation best by turning to account the gift which 
He Himself has given. You who are fond of children, 
as most frank true natures are, give yourself to teaching ; 



THE FESTIVAL. is? 

and you who have a fervid forceful spirit, and find that 
spirit stirred by the state of our godless multitude, go 
out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to 
come in. And you who cannot arrest or keep the 
children's ear, and to whom aught like preaching would 
be useless martyrdom, seek out some other ministry : 
consecrate the business talent, and in the savings bank 
or provident fund, in the committee or council of the 
church, "rule with diligence." Or go forth and visit. 
The tired watcher in the sick-room release for a few 
hours of needful slumber. Take to the bed-rid child 
some plaything, to the destitute family some comfort. 
And whether you offer the brief prayer, or read the 
words of Jesus to the invalid, *' show mercy with cheer- 
fulness :" try to do it as if you came and went in Christ's 
own company, and then, long after you have left, the 
consolation will remain. 

It is thus that by each following out his own line of 
things the world's best work has been done ; and in the 
free development and loving consecration of gifts, the 
Church has exhibited a diversity both useful and 
beautiful. It was thus that, wherever John Macdonald 
went in perambulating the Highlands, a wave of spiritual 
influence went with him ; and it was thus that, like a 
Baptist and a beloved disciple combined, George White- 
field startled and melted all England. It Is thus that, in 
our own day, one Christian lady has sought out the 
prisoner, and another has softened and civilised the 



158 THE FESTIVAL. 

neglected navvy, and a third has mended "ragged 
homes," and a fourth has invented the Bible and Domestic 
Mission, and a fifth has rallied to the task of nursing — 
so arduous, yet so angel-like — the refined and well-trained 
amongst her countrywomen. And it is thus that in an 
employment, however commonplace, and in a corner, 
however inconspicuous, if you take up the task which 
your hand finds to do, and throw into it the might which 
God gives, the result will be genuine, solid, enduring. 
Let each do his own work in his own way, and, as all 
good work is God's, you will soon see it a more beautiful 
church and a better world. 

To a few God gives a high calling. Like Gustavus 
Adolphus, when, at the close of three exhausting cam- 
paigns, he listened to the cry of the German Protestants, 
and began the contest which to him ended at Lutzen, 
to the Fatherland only ended as yesterday : " For me 
henceforward remains no rest, save the eternal :" they 
are summoned to a service, peculiar, protracted, exhaust- 
ing — a service which conscience dare not decline, or 
from which, when fairly commenced, they can never break 
away. But more usually, instead of a single absorbing 
pursuit, the Christian's calling includes a thousand details. 
We remember Dr. N. Murray, the famous " Kirwan" of 
America, mentioning that in his youth he met an old 
disciple, ninety-one years of age, and in taking leave the 
venerable pilgrim left with his young friend a charge 
which he had never forgotten : " Do all the good you 



THE FESTIVAL. 159 

can — to all the people you can — in all the ways you can 
— and as long as you can." If that rule were carried out 
by each Christian, it would soon change the face of 
society. If you, who are the Christian member of the 
family, were setting a watch over your lips, and were in 
all things wise, gentle, obliging, self-denying, high-toned, 
few in the household could withstand the quiet persistent 
sermon ; and if the Christian households of the land were 
as peaceful as they are pure — if the several inmates were 
fair-minded, kind-hearted, mutually helpful — if in the 
school, the market, the social gathering, the various mem- 
bers lived up to the level of their morning and evening 
worship — there would soon be poor chance for the 
infidel : apologetics might become an obsolete science : 
with such a church in every house, the synagogue of 
Satan would disappear from the land. 

— The feast is ended. The fatted calf is consumed ; 
the music and dancing have ceased ; and although there 
abides a deep calm thankfulness, the mirth and excite- 
ment are over. There is no need, however, to tread the 
deserted hall, and grow sentimental because the '' lights 
are fled," and "the garlands dead." You are home; 
you are in the Father's house ; and if you are a good son, 
now that it is morning you will be ready to set about the 
Father's business. Without waiting for the word express, 
you will proceed as if it were actually spoken, '' Son, go 
work this day in my vineyard." It is from not remember- 
ing this that many a younger son is so wretched. You 



i6o THE FESTIVAL, 

are idle ; you are useless ; with plenty of lip-homage, you 
have little filial affection ; you have not that love to your 
Father which rouses to activity and self-denial ; and, as if 
it were a mystery or a hardship, you complain that you 
no longer enjoy the happiness of your first home-coming. 
After the rich spiritual food you once enjoyed, the fare 
seems scanty and common. You come to the house of 
God, but find no feast of fat things, and it even seems as 
if on your Father's face there were a displeased look — a 
very decided frown. 

Would you know the reason ? There is a divine 
delicacy in the ways of God. He does not clog His 
gospel with conditions, nor is the joy of forgiveness 
dashed by formal stipulations as to future conduct. He 
would have you be, not a hired servant, but a son — a son 
whose interest and honour are bound up with His own ; 
and if you cannot hear the voice of the neglected vine- 
yard crying to every idler, " Come, work!'' He will not 
vex you by repeating too often, ''Son, go!" Neverthe- 
less, knowing as you do the will of your Father, and 
merely saying, '' I go, sir," without ever stirring a step, 
can you wonder that He is grieved at His heart ? can 
you wonder that your consolations are small ? can you 
wonder if you feel a dulness and depression which you 
once thought it impossible that you could ever experience 
at home ? 



AN ANGRY BROTHER. 



M 



Now his elder son was in the field : and as he came and drew nigh to the house, he 
heard music and dancing. And he called one of the servants, and asked what 
these things meant. And he said unto him, Thy brother is come ; and thy father 
hath killed the fatted calf, because he hath received him safe and sound. And he 
was angry, and would not go in." — Luke xv. 25-28. 




THY BROTHER IS COME; AND THY FATHER HATH KILLED THE FATTED 
CALF, BECAUSE HE HATH RECEIVED HIM SAFE AND SOUND. 



AN ANGRY BROTHER. 



Mirth within, murmurs without; joy in heaven over 
sinners repenting, on earth jealousy — even amongst 
respectable professors of religion decided disapproval : 
Such are the contrasts here presented. 

They had begun to be merry. The fatted calf had 
disappeared, but the table was still groaning with good 
things, and still from storehouse and vineyard the eager 
attendants kept piling the board ; whilst every time that 
it rested on the worn face at his side, and through tears 
and smiles predicted a happy future, the fathers eye 
glistened, and as the first embrace was repeated again 
and again, , friends and neighbours would look to one 
another and say, "Is he not happy ? " 

But in the midst of it all — so loud that, though 
amidst the clash of the cymbals and the strain of the 
harp-strings, bounding feet and busy talk were scarcely 
audible, the discord at once pierced through the melody 
— in came the noise of altercation from without. When 
the prodigal arrived, the elder brother had been ** in the 
field " — at another farm, or on a distant part of the estate ; 



i64 AN ANGRY BROTHER. 

and it is not a good sign of him that no one volunteered 
to go after him and carry the tidings. We suspect 
his sullen humour must have been too well known ; for 
even when he was seen approaching, no one ran forward 
in the hope of giving him an agreeable surprise. Accord- 
ingly, it was not till he came near enough to notice the 
bustle and hear the music and dancing that he demanded, 
" What does all this mean?" '' Thy brother is come," was 
the hearty straightforward answer ; " and thy father hath 
killed the fatted calf, because he hath received him safe 
and sound." To his cold and loveless nature, with its 
mean and mercenary spirit, the announcement was gall 
and wormwood. What did he care for his brother ? a 
thorough scapegrace, whose absence was good company ! 
after all his bad behaviour, how wrong to give him this 
reception ! And then, as he thought of his own sober life 
and steady conduct, his sense of justice was aggrieved, 
and he could not curb his indignation. Has it been for 
this that the fatted calf was kept ? and is this the recom- 
pense of long years of service ? It was positively unfair : 
he did well to be angry. No indeed, he did not want 
to go in : he would rather go away. And there he 
stood, storming and scolding, till the angry words dis- 
turbed the guests and brought out his father. 

Who is this elder son ? Doubtless, it was intended 
that the murmurers then present should recognise in him 
their own portrait ; just as they should see in this picture 
of paternal magnanimity the principle on which, in re- 



AN ANGRY BROTHER, 165 

ceiving publicans and sinners, Christ and His Father 
proceeded. '' Conceding what you claim — granting that 
you Scribes and Pharisees are 'just persons who need 
no repentance ' — should you not be glad to see sinners 
repenting, and wanderers restored to the paths of 
righteousness ? " But, with its divine and far-reaching 
comprehensiveness, the parable suits every case of that 
sour self-complacency, which, ignorant of God's law, 
thinks it has established a claim on God's justice, and 
which, unable to sympathise with divine generosity, 
resents as a wrong to itself the kindness extended to 
others. It suits the Hebrew Church in the apostolic 
age, looking askance at Gentile Christendom, and grudg- 
ing that the fatted calf, the portion of Israel, God's first- 
born, should be given to the heathen prodigal. It suits 
the dry and pedantic professor in a time of religious 
awakening, who does not like the excitement and the 
Interruption of the ordinary tranquil routine, and who 
likes least of all the ragged reprobate, the outcast newly 
reclaimed, his younger brother. It suits the Pharisee, 
who till near the close keeps lurking in almost every 
heart. " Who is this elder son ? " The question was 
once asked in an assembly of ministers, at Elberfeldt : 
Daniel Krummacher made answer, " I know him very 
well : I met him yesterday." " Who is he ?" they asked 
eagerly, and he replied solemnly, *' Myself." He then 
explained that on the previous day, hearing that a very 
ill-conditioned person had received a very gracious visit- 



i66 AN ANGRY BROTHER. 

ation of God's goodness, he had felt not a little envy and 
irritation * 

" God's'thoughts are not as ours — we gird our breast 

With the cold iron of complacent pride ; 
Our charities and kindness are comprest 

With earth's hard bands, that check our love's soft tide ; 
And we to sinners say, with scornful brow, 

' Stand off, for I am holier than thou ! ' 

" Oh ! 'tis not thus with God : His arms of love 
Yearn for the thankless prodigal's embrace j 
He sees him yet afar. He longs to prove 
His love and pity and forgiving grace : 
The Holy Dove spreads soft His peaceful wings, 

And joy in heaven tunes high the seraph's strings." t 

Latent in the parable, this brings to light the true 
Elder Brother. Shut up and frigid, with no candle of the 
Lord shining in his conscience, no coal from the altar 
glowing in his heart, the Pharisee has neither the sense 
of sin which sympathises with the penitent, nor the loving- 
kindness which enters into the joy of a sin-forgiving 
God. " Every one that loveth is born of God. He that 
loveth not knoweth not God : for God is love." Even 
although it had been by nothing else, by His infinite 
faculty of love the Lord Jesus proved Himself the 
divinest of all men, whilst at the same time He became 
to us the most brotherly. With no connivance at evil, 
with no compromise of the law's requirement, His was 

* Stier's Words of Jesus (Clark's Lib.) vol. iv. p. 142. 
f Poems, by the late Mrs. T. D. Crewdson. 



AN ANGRY BROTHER. 167 

that vast compassion which overcomes our evil with its 
good — that holy pity which softens into penitence and 
helps on to new obedience the heavy-laden transgressor. 
Here " in the midst" — here in the gospel of His grace, 
and here in His unchanging omnipresence — O sinner, be- 
hold your Saviour. It is He who from the Father's 
bosom has come to the far country seeking the wanderer. 
It is He who assures you that, all provocations notwith- 
standing, the heart of God is still fatherly. It is He who 
holds out His hand and says to you, wearied of husks and 
weak with hunger, " Come, for all things are ready." It 
is He who, when you faintly rejoin, *' I fain would arise 
and go, but I know not the way," makes answer, *' I am 
the way," and bids you *' come boldly." And when you 
droop the head and feel that you cannot so much as lift 
up your eyes to heaven, it is He who declares that He is 
not ashamed to call you brother, and who. Himself giving 
the word, bids you say in His name " Our Father." 

In the elder son of the parable the frightful feature is 
the total lack of affection. Unforgiving towards his 
brother, petulant to his father, it turns out that his vaunted 
obedience has all along been mercenary, and with his 
sulky looks and saucy words he stands before us utterly 
unamiable — the impersonation of that darkest, dreariest 
thing in all the universe — a loveless self-centered being. 

It is a disposition which needs to be guarded against: 
for in our fallen nature there are terrible tendencies 
towards it. With some it takes the form of a cold cal- 



i68 AN ANGRY BROTHER, 

culatmg selfishness ; and just as people who do not want 
the swallows to build in their windows take the brush and 
coat the corners with oil ; so the thorough worldling is 
varnished all over. Friends may be useful, but attach- 
ments and sympathies are inconvenient, and therefore he 
is careful not to permit them. Even his parents, if they 
grow old and it is suggested that he might do something 
towards promoting their comfort — he Is sorry that the 
money which might have been otherwise available for 
them "is corban ^' — dedicated to another use, or so 
locked up that he cannot get at it. Every appeal to 
generosity, to gratitude, to pity. Is like the poor martin's 
best-tempered mortar applied to the unctuous marble : 
met by refusals polite and plausible, from the surface of 
a heart fat as grease and hard as stone it falls off ineffec- 
tual ; and thus, shutting up his compassions. If there ever 
was In him aught like the love of God, it dies away, and 
his gloomy soul goes out in the blackness of darkness. 
Whilst with others the same sombre spirit assumes a form 
more malignant and virulent. With nothing which they 
can love — for even their self Is to itself unlovable — they 
lead the demon's life, and seek a bitter satisfaction in 
making others wretched. " Full of envy, murder, debate, 
backbiters, haters of God, without natural affection, im- 
placable, unmerciful," in the acetous fermentation of their 
own perversity the bounties of providence, the assiduities 
of kinsfolk and dependants, only sour the temper which 
they intended to sweeten; and disdainful of love, yet 



AN ANGRY BROTHER. 169 

indignant at its absence, and for the sake of gratifying a 
fierce vindictiveness, courting insult, almost glad to be 
misunderstood or disobeyed, they pass through life 
fretting and fuming, grumbling and growling, and in their 
reign of terror give a frightful facsimile of Apollyon s 
dark dominion. 

To be brought into intimate, perhaps life-long re- 
lations, with such heartless or malevolent natures, is one 
of the heaviest crosses which any one can carry. Even 
simple wrong-headedness is a considerable trial ; and 
there are in the world a good many '' utterly unmanage- 
able persons. You cannot say they are madmen. You 
cannot say they are idiots. But rationality flickers about 
them in so strange a way that they are often more diffi- 
cult to deal with than the utterly irrational."* Yet, per- 
plexing or provoking as such impracticable people may 
be, and humiliating as are the positions into which their 
impulsiveness brings us, their folly is often compensated 
by noble attributes, and the ministering spirit may find the 
difficult task of guiding and guarding them a labour of 
love. But alas for the helpmate of a savage ! alas for 
the child or the servant of a churl ! alas for the human 
heart on which a swart Vulcan forges his thunderbolts ! 
alas for the head at which an explosive Jupiter hurls 
them ! Although even here, in the perfect work of 
patience and in the maturing of meek and long-suffer- 
ing graces, there is a certain compensation, and the long 
* Friends in Council, second series, vol. ii. p. 18. 



170 AN ANGRY BROTHER, 

bondage is usually cheered by fits of rough kindness or 
gleams of better feeling. But to be " mated to a clown ;" 
to "radiate affection into a clod:" to waste not merely 
the wealth of a playful fancy but the riches of a fond and 
self-devoting spirit on dull irresponsive earthhness, with 
no compensation in the present, with no hope in the 
future, this is the sorrow of sorrows. The father in the 
parable had a son seemingly void of affection, and we 
have known sons with a father so dreary that they found 
it difficult to fulfil the fifth command. And who is there 
over whose spirit there has not flitted a feeling like what 
Richter has described as his own, riding part of the road 
with a rustic bridegroom taking home his young bride ? — 
" Oh, be not so joyful, poor sacrifice ! Thy husband will 
soon demand of thee neither tenderness nor a light heart, 
but only rough working fingers, feet never weary, labour- 
ing arms, and a silent paralytic tongue." When it comes 
to that, for heart, for soul, for thoughts which might be 
accepted if not exchanged, there is no longer any use ; 
and if they know not to go up to God, the best affec- 
tions of our nature must just run to waste till the fresh- 
ness of feeling has exhaled, or till the weariful existence 
has burned itself away. 

All true love is one. The first commandment is very 
great, but the second is not little. They are upper and 
nether pools, and the same fountain fills them. He who 
is richest in the love of God has the greatest advantage 
for loving his neighbour — for loving his family, his house- 



AN ANGRY BROTHER. 171 

hold, his country, and the world. And that is the best 
and happiest state of things — the primal and truly natural 
— where, springing from under the throne of God, with a 
bright and heaven-reflecting piety love fills the upper 
pool ; then through the open flower-fringed channel of 
filial affection and the domestic charities flows softly till 
it again expands in neighbourly kindness and unreserved 
philanthropy. The channel may be choked. The de- 
votee may close it up in the hope of raising the level in 
the first and great reservoir ; but by arresting the current 
he causes an overflow, and converts into swamp the sur- 
rounding garden. In the same way, the materialist or 
worldling, content with the lower pool, may fill up the 
conduit and declare that he is no longer dependent on the 
upper magazine ; but from the isolated cistern quickly 
evaporates the scanty supply, and thick with slime, welter- 
ing with worms, the stagnant residue mocks the thirsty 
owner, or as over the bubbling malaria he persists to 
linger, it fills his frame with the mortal fever. Cut off 
from living water, receiving from on high no consecrating 
element, human affection is too sure to end in the disgust 
of a disappointed Idolatry or the mad despair of a total 
bereavement : whilst the mystic theopathy which, in order 
to give the whole heart to God, gives none to its fellows, 
will soon have no heart at all. 

Love is of God, and all true love is one. The piety 
which is not humane will soon grow superstitious and 
gloomy ; in cases like Dominic and Philip the Second 



172 AN ANGRY BROTHER. 

we see that it may soon grow bloodthirsty and cruel : 
nor, on the other hand, will brotherly love long continue 
If the love of God Is not shed abroad abundantly. And 
it is as the cradle of either affection — It Is In order that 
life may begin in the sweet union of affection and wor- 
ship, that God created and in a fallen world perpetuates 
the home. 

To use the words of a thoughtful writer : " God made 
the first man after a divine original, and after a divine 
original, too, He made the first home . . . God has 
not borrowed these images — ' father,' ' children,' * home/ 
It is heaven that lends to earth, not earth to heaven. 
The things that are upon earth, the things which have 
root In humanity as God made it, and which are not the 
devil's work, are first there. Heaven but reclaims Its own 
when it takes these images, and applies them again to 
heavenly use.""'^ And although the downward tendencies 
of human nature often make the task tremendous — 
although the best-Intentioned members of the home 
are after all only sinful beings surrounded by others of 
like passions and like infirmities — the Institution is so 
holy, and the calling of each member so high, that no 
effort should be spared, no prayer cease, till it become 
what God designed and will assuredly help us to make 
it, a nursery for heaven, by becoming ever nearer and 
nearer to a heaven on earth. 

* The Home Life : in the Light of its Divine Ldea. By J. Baldwin 
Brown, p. 8. 



AN ANGRY BROTHER. 173 

Dr. Livingstone mentions a place where the people 
have never seen flowers."' How you pity their children ! 
But on man made after His own image God has bestowed 
a power corresponding to His own creative faculty ; and 
although — like ants which throw off their wings in 
becoming workers — most grown people have discarded 
their imagination before entering on actual life, the little 
ones still have it ; and if there are no flowers, they will 
quickly make them. If the surrounding atmosphere be 
warm and genial, wakeful life will be a ceaseless joy : 
invention will never be exhausted, and the materials of 
pastime will never be far to seek : a few corks will im- 
provise a navy, and sticks and stones a palace. Only 
you must keep up the temperature. The fairy-world of 
the little *' makers " — as we used to call the poets — col- 
lapses in chill weather, and if, in the shape of a sullen 
nurse or non-sympathetic mother, a glacier invades the 
play-room, the frost-bitten Eden is soon replaced by 
bleak reality, and the expatriated exiles, waking up in an 
old-people's world, grow joyless and cross, and begin 
to quarrel with one another. 

Very precious is that power which the little children 
have, and which, when we become as little children, we 
sometimes get again. It is not entirely creative. There 
is in it something of the open vision. The cradle of the 
race was in the midst of beauty, God smiling over it, 
nature smiling round it; and of a vague blessedness and 
* Missionary Travels^ p. loi. 



174 AN ANGRY BROTHER. 

beauty enough still lingers to make the infant smile back 
again. When Blake the artist was ten years old he saw 
at Peckham Rye " a tree full of angels/* His father 
beat and scolded, but young William would not shut his 
eyes, and all through life kept sight of the angels. And 
just as "their angels do always behold the face of the 
Father," so God comes very near them. No check upon 
their sports, at mention of His name there may be a 
momentary sedateness, a moment of awed wonder : but 
still very near, and still notwithstanding all their naughti- 
ness very kind, their faith gives freedom, and the truest 
reverence is their love. We knew a little girl not three 
years old. She put into her prayers real desires. One 
night before lying down, after praying for papa, mama, 
and her nurse by name, she prayed with the same solem- 
nity for the new kitten. '' O God, open little pussy's 
eyes, and make its tail grow." She was not told that 
this was wrong, or bidden pray for the Jews and the 
heathen instead ; and perhaps it was better to let the 
prayer grow with her growth, for when she was older 
and became interested in them, of her own accord she 
prayed for both Jews and Gentiles ; and if she had 
been told that it was not proper to pray about such little 
things as kittens, she might next have doubted whether 
it was right for little things to pray. 

Let the children's home be bright and beautiful and 
very gladsome. It was brightly that the existence of the 
race began ; and with all that you can do to embellish 



AN ANGRY BROTHER. 175 

and enliven the nursery, It will not be so charming as the 
first place which our Heavenly Father prepared for His 
children : it will not come up to the garden God planted 
on the banks of Hiddekel. But when bleak days arrive, 
it is good to have sweet and sunny memories ; for fancy 
gives them wings and sends them on before, and in the 
guise of hope they invite us into the future. What we 
call Idealism Is really Edenism : it Is partly the reminiscence 
of one paradise, partly the effort after another. And In 
that home the very brightest, gladdest, holiest thing, let 
it be the name of Jesus, the presence of God. In psalms 
and hymns sweetly sung, In the going up to the house 
of God, in Sabbaths crowned with special joys, in Bible 
stories and good books, let there be not only the didactic 
but the endearing; and even If some loveless nature should 
be the sad exception, and pass through It all as sullen as 
that elder brother, it may well be hoped that few will ever 
wander ; and if there should be some hapless prodigal, 
— carrying such recollections with him, who can doubt 
that In the, far country they will at last awaken an irre- 
sistible longing, and end in exclaiming, "■ I will arise 
and go to my Father ?" 

Be this your aim. Father, mother, brothers, sisters, 
as the years advance, join your efforts to upbuild and 
beautify the home. Let it be the abode of peace, and 
love, and mutual helpfulness, and let those nights be the 
happiest when no one needs to leave it. 



176 AN ANGRY BROTHER. 

" How calm, how blest this tranquil hour 
Of household evening joy ! 
The world shut out, with all its power 
To trouble or annoy. 

" The world shut out, and love shut in, , 
With youth and gentle mirth, 
Which ever make their pleasant din 
Best by the household hearth. 

" The duties of the day are done, 
Its toil and burden o'er. 
To claim, until the rising sun, 
Our anxious hearts no more. 

" Then let us rest amid the gifts 
God's tenderness hath given. 
And bless each blessing as it Hfts 
Our grateful hearts to heaven." * 

A scene like that, a shadow of still better things, to 
the heart which has ever known it will be a charm for 
ever : — a magnet, the force of which will be felt across 
the hemisphere — a saving memory which in the darkest 
hour will sustain the wanderers faith in goodness and 

in God. 

* Monsell. 



A RIGHTEOUS FATHER 



N 



Therefore came his father out, and entreated him. And he answering said to his 
father, Lo, these many years do I serve thee, neither transgressed I at any time 
thy commandment ; and yet thou never gavest me a kid, that I might make 
merry with my friends : but as soon as this thy son was come, which hath 
devoured thy Hving with harlots, thou hast killed for him the fatted calf. And 
he said unto him, Son, thou art ever with me, and aU that I have is thine. It 
was meet that we should make meriy and be glad : for this thy brother was 
dead, and is alive again ; and was lost, and is found." — Luke xv. 28-32. 




HE WAS ANGRY, AND WOULD NOT GO IN: THEREFORE CAME HIS 
FATHER OUT, AND ENTREATED HIM. 



A RIGHTEOUS FATHER. 



Sketched by the hand of a Divine Artist, we have 
here a picture of fatherhood inimitable and unapproach- 
able, and which inevitably sends up our thoughts to the 
Divine Original from which it is outlined. Fain would 
we dwell on it ; but before passing away we merely 
notice 

1. The father's love, — Of a kindred love the apostle 
declares that its breadth, and length, and depth, and 
height pass knowledge ; and a great deep must have 
been that affection which the sharp wind of ingratitude 
failed to freeze, which a long course of waywardness 
could not exhaust, and of which, on the prodigal's return, 
the fountains broke up, and, overflowing in a grand 
final burst of compassion, covered mountains of provo- 
cation, leaving all things new at their reflux in the mind 
of the pardoned penitent. 

2. His wisdom. — Our fondness sometimes grows 
foolish, and in concessions and refusals alike our weak- 
ness is shown. When the younger son demanded his 
portion of goods, though deeply wounded the father did 
not withstand. His home should not be a prison, and 



i8o A RIGHTEOUS FATHER. 

where the highest considerations and holiest influences 
had lost their power, he would not resort to coercion. 
He foresaw the result, but as this was a folly which ex- 
perience alone could cure, he allowed the truant to depart 
and find out for himself how hard is the way of trans- 
gressors. Nor did he shorten the trial. If, as is not 
unlikely, he knew of the famine in the far country, he 
took no steps to interpose betwixt the misguided youth 
and a severe but salutary discipline ; till, thoroughly 
filled with the fruits of his own devices, he felt and 
owned the bitter evil of his sin. 

3. His dignity, — In all the father's sayings, as well as 
in his silence, come out the tokens of a lofty mind. 
When the younger son demands his portion, the deed 
which wisdom dictates is performed with regal grandeur ; 
no remonstrance, no unavailing entreaties, no attempt at 
compromise, nothing kept back in the way of deduction ; 
and when he returns, a ragged and penniless outcast, 
there is no recalling of the past, no stipulation as to the 
future, but a forgiveness frank and free, a kingly munifi- 
cence dissolving in fatherly tenderness, and from an 
ingenuous spirit the surest to draw back filial devotion. 
With like elevation he meets a rude remonstrance. In 
the coarseness of rage the elder son did not even address 
him as " father," and only spoke of his brother as " this 
thy son ; " but with high-born grace and the kindly tact 
of a goodness safe in its own supremacy, the father 
vindicates himself, and puts to shame the angry raller. 



A RIGHTEOUS FATHER. i8i 

" Son " — for it is thus he retorts the insult which would 
not call him " father " — ** Son, thou art ever with me, and 
all that I have is thine. It was meet that we [you and 
I and all of us] should make merry and be glad ; [and if 
any should be merrier than another it is thou] for this 
thy brother was dead, and is alive again ; and he was 
lost, and is found." 

4. His la7^ge-heartedness. — Not only was he a generous 
householder, where the hired servants had bread enough 
and to spare ; but he could not be happy himself without 
giving others a share. " To the servants he had never 
told his grief; but now the prodigal is come back, and 
his heart is bursting with joy, he tells them of it. He 
cannot conceal it, he does not seek to conceal it. He 
says. Let us eat and be merry — I am so happy myself, I 
wish all others to be happy. Banish all care ; drop your 
toils ; let the shepherd come from the hill, the ploughman 
from the furrow, the herd from the pastures, the meanest 
servant come ; and all wearing smiles, and joining in the 
song, hold holiday with my heart."""' 

5. His equity, — His elder son thought him unfair. 
" Here have I been toiling on these weary years, improving 
the estate and never causing thee a moment's anxiety : 
yet thou hast never given me so much as a kid with 
which to entertain my friends : but as soon as this thy 
son was come, who hath devoured thy living with harlots, 
thou hast killed for him the fatted calf." Angry and out- 

* Dr. Guthrie. 



1 82 A RIGHTEOUS FATHER. 



1 



spoken, this splenetic effusion betrayed a wretched spirit. 
Passing for a son, he had all along been actuated by 
feehngs which many a hireling would blush to avow; 
and, " never receiving wages, he had certainly never yet 
enjoyed the only true reward in his heart."* After a 
speech so petulant and saucy, the father might have 
turned away in displeasure and left him to his wrathful 
musings ; but in order to bring him to his right mind, in 
the tone most fitted to conquer and conciliate, he sets 
before the murmurer considerations which had escaped 
his evil eye. The question of work and wages was 
settled by that one word " Son," and is disposed of more 
completely still in the noble utterance, " All that I have 
is thine." Betwixt a father and a son there can be no 
separate Interests. If desirous to entertain thy friends, 
there was not on all the estate kid or fatted calf which 
thou couldst not any day command. But there are higher 
equities than work and wages. Even as a labourer thou 
hast received thine hire ; but when all accounts are settled 
we still owe love to one another : our debt to the highest 
charities it needs a lifetime to discharge. It is " meet " 
that we should forgive faults and injuries. It is meet 
that we should compassionate the wretched and receive 
the penitent. It is meet that we should fulfil the claims 
of affection, be it parental or fraternal ; and when our 
hearts are filled with gladness it is meet that we should 
express our joy, and let our friends and neighbours share 
* Van Oosterzee On Zuke, vol. ii. p. 68. 



A RIGHTEOUS FATHER. 183 

it. It is meet that you and I should on a day like this 
make merry. 

Let us hope that the entreaty was not in vain, and 
that, bringing to his right mind the elder son, this happy 
night closed over a completed family. For, as it now 
turns out, both sons had been lost. The one had run 
away, but the other was a truant in spirit though he tarried 
at home. And to give heart and soul to a loveless nature 
— to give loyalty and devotion to the calculating merce- 
nary — to create the filial spirit where there was nothing 
but the name before, needs grace as mighty as that which 
heals backslidings and recals the wanderer, and sets 
among the princes the once abject and degraded prodigal. 



A piece of gold may be melted, and it may be moulded 
into almost any shape. It may be rolled out in bars, 
drawn into wire, minted into money. It may be twisted 
into the finest filigree, or beaten into leaflets, compared 
with which the flimsiest fabric of the loom or paper-frame 
seems coarse. But if you are so fortunate as to find a 
goodly pearl, you will not apply pincers or hammer, nor 
will you put it in the crucible. You will do wisely to 
preserve its original form unaltered, its native lustre 
unimpaired. 

Some texts are golden. In the arguments of the 
Epistles and in the devotional outpourings of the Psalms, 
as well as in the historical incidents of either Testament, 



1 84 A RIGHTEOUS FATHER. 

those who search the Scriptures will find great truths 
imbedded ; and, sectile, ductile, malleable, we feel that it 
is no misuse if they are projected into propositions, 
divided into heads and particulars, drawn out into mani- 
fold applications, or even attenuated into such thin foil 
as is used in the manufacture of modern theological 
essays. A good deal may be done with a few grains of 
gold ; and in this field, faithful and persevering search is 
sure to be rewarded with hoards or solid ingots. 

There are other passages, however, which we dare 
not thus handle. We may repeat them, and revolve 
them, and, like gems, may hold them up in different 
lights, or try them in various settings ; but such a saying 
as " God is love," and such an incident as our Lord's 
lamentation over Jerusalem, we feel as if no scholastic tool 
should ever touch them. What better can the preacher 
do than exhibit them in their divine and unapproachable 
glory to the reverential contemplation of his hearers, per- 
adventure trying a few of those expedients which are open 
to us in the way of foil and cross-light and contrast ? 

Such a feeling has kept us hovering timidly over this 
" pearl of parables."''^ Unable to pass away from it, we 

* An expression of Stier, quoted by Van Oosterzee, Alford, and 
nearly all subsequent annotators. " For the beautiful, the pathetic, the 
instructive," says Dr. Adam Clarke, " the history of Joseph in the Old 
Testament, and the parable of the prodigal son in the New, have no 
parallels either in sacred or profane history." Even the cold rational- 
istic temperament of Grotius is thawed into a fervid admiration. "Inter 
omnes Christi parabolas haec sane eximia, plena affectumm, et pul- 



A RIGHTEOUS FATHER. 185 

have failed to expound it. We have thrown out a few 
thoughts which its contemplation suggested, and noted a 
few analogous incidents gleaned from the records of a 
kindred experience. But the fair flower in your garden 
you do not cut down and dissect ; you rather return and 
dwell on its loveliness day after day. And when people 
speak of throwing light on such a passage, it almost seems 
a preposterous inversion. Itself a light in a dark place, 
as there it stands and from the lattice of the Father's house 
shines toward our far country, its friendly radiance has 
cheered and guided to the threshold many a benighted 
wanderer. It needs no exposition. It only needs the 
softened heart, the wistful gaze, the single eye. These 
may He graciously bestow who is the Spirit of Truth and 
Tenderness ! 

No doubt, from time to time as we proceeded, parallel 
instances have recurred to the mind of many a reader. 
Besides names already quoted, some would think of John 
Newton and General Burn. To memories familiar with 
early Christian records would recur the story of the youth 
become a renegade and robber, so remarkably reclaimed 

cherrimis picta coloribus." As has been well said by a living compatriot 
of the great Hollander, " Nowhere is that divine compassion which an- 
ticipates and outruns the sinner set forth in a way more tender and 
human — I might say, in a way more sincere and affectionate — than in 
this beautiful parable, which gives us deep insight into both the loving 
heart of the Divine Father and the sinful heart of man (Gods liefderijk 
vaderhart en het zondaarshart van den mensch)." Cohen-Stuart : De 
Verloren Zoon, Utrecht, p. 7. 



1 86 A RIGHTEOUS FATHER. 

by the apostle John ; and what are Augustine's Confes- 
sions but a long and yet intense expansion of the 
Prodigal's prayer ? In the Pitcairn Islanders we have the 
departure and return of a prodigal ship's company ; and 
the annals of reformations and religious revivals remind 
us of the Father s house forsaken and sought again by 
prodigal nations. A few individual examples may form an 
appropriate conclusion. They may comfort those who are 
mourning over a prodigal not yet returned. They illus- 
trate the providence of God and the way of His Spirit. 
They are an encouragement to prayer, and on the side of 
parents and others they should be an incentive to per- 
sonal exemplariness as long as the family circle continues 
unbroken. 

During the late American war, at one of the Saturday 
evening meetings in Camp Distribution said a soldier to 
his comrades, " My friends, I left home an infidel, but I 
left a praying wife. A week ago I received a letter from 
her, in which she expressed anxiety for the welfare of my 
soul, and desired to know if I still held to my old views. 
I wrote an answer to the letter, and in bitter words 
defended my old position. As I was about to seal the 
letter, it seemed to me I could not send it. I wrote 
another, softened down considerably from the first, but 
when that was done I could not send it. I commenced 
another, but such was the power of the Spirit upon my 
heart, that I fell upon my knees and begged for forgive- 
ness before God. I could not finish the letter until I 



A RIGHTEOUS FATHER. 187 

could say to my dear wife that Christ had forgiven my 
sins. I have been permitted to write to her that I am 
to-night rejoicing in her Saviour. I feel that I am now 
prepared for the battle-field, and if ever I am permitted 
to return home, I trust I shall go back prepared for that, 
a better man than when I came into the army."''^ We 
hope the praying wife and the converted husband were 
soon allowed to meet ; but sometimes these prayers are 
not answered till the supplicant has reached the land of 
praise. When Hedley Vicars was in Canada there was 
a young man in his Bible-class who sometimes felt a good 
deal touched by the earnest words of that fine Christian 
hero ; but although almost persuaded, like most of his 
comrades he continued frolicsome, light-hearted, and god- 
less. They were ordered to the Crimea, and one dark 
night in the trenches the Russians made a sortie, and In 
repelling it Vicars fell with a rifle-ball through his heart. 
A bullet pierced through the heart of the captain, and at the 
same instant a sword went through the soul of the young 
soldier. The captain, he felt, has gone to heaven ; but 
where shall I go if there be a like messenger for me ? 
The words which his fallen chief had spoken whilst yet 
with them were now called to remembrance, and ended 
in the entire revolution of his feelings and character. — It 
was from the lips of the Crimean soldier himself that we 
heard the tale, and he had then become a diligent and 
faithful Christian minister. 
* Fourth Annual Report of the United States Christian Commission^ p. 77. 



1 88 A RIGHTEOUS FATHER. 

The far country is wide, and to those who try to 
follow the prodigal its recesses are intricate, its fast- 
nesses very inaccessible. But although the remonstrances 
of a father, the tears of a sister, the silent beseechings of 
a broken-hearted wife, may never overtake the v/anderer ; 
although, shut up in the iron fortress of his own passion 
or self-pleasing, he may defy them all, and throw them 
off as the adamant sheds the hail-shower, there is One 
who compasses the path of the prodigal, and from whose 
presence it is idle to flee. We told how a prodigal's 
progress was arrested in the case of George Cowie of 
Huntly. On the authority of his biographer, we venture 
to relate an incident still more striking in the career of 
the illustrious American missionary, Adoniram Judson. 
He was a minister's son, and, very able and very ambi- 
tious, he was early sent to college. In the class above 

was a young man of the name of E , brilliant, witty, 

and popular, but a determined deist. Between him and 
the minister's son there sprang up a close intimacy, which 
ended in the latter gradually renouncing all his early 
beliefs, and becoming as great a sceptic as his friend. He 
was only twenty years of age, and you may be sure it was 
a terrible distress and consternation which filled the home 
circle, when, during the recess, he announced that he was 
no longer a believer in Christianity. More than a match 
for his father's arguments, he steeled himself against all 
softer influences, and with his mind made up to enjoy life 
and see the world, he first joined a company of players at 



A RIGHTEOUS FATHER. 189 

New York, and then set out on a solitary tour. One 
night he stopped at a country inn. Lighting him to his 
room, the landlord mentioned that he had been obliged 
to place him next door to a young man who was exceed- 
ingly ill, in all probability dying, but he hoped that it 
would occasion him no uneasiness. Judson assured him 
that, beyond pity for the poor sick man, he should have 
no feeling whatever. Still the night proved a restless 
one. Sounds came from the sick chamber — sometimes 
the movements of the watchers, sometimes the groans of 
the sufferer — and the young traveller could not sleep. 
So close at hand, with but a thin partition between us, 
he thought, there is an immortal spirit about to pass into 
eternity, and is he prepared ? And then he thought, 
" For shame of my shallow philosophy ! What would 

E , so intellectual and clear-headed, think of this 

boyish weakness ?" And then he tried to sleep, but still 
the picture of the dying man rose up to his imagination. 
He was a ''young man," and the young student felt com- 
pelled to place himself on his neighbour's dying bed, and 
he could not help fancying what, in such circumstances, 
would be his thoughts. But the morning dawned, and 
in the welcome daylight his " superstitious illusions " fled 
away. When he came down stairs he inquired of the 
landlord how his fellow-lodger had passed the night. 
'' He is dead," was the answer. " Dead !" *' Yes ; he is 
gone, poor fellow ! The doctor said he would probably 
not survive the night." " Do you know who he was ?" 



I90 A RIGHTEOUS FATHER. 

" Oh, yes ; it was a young man from Providence College 

— a very fine fellow; his name was E ." Judson 

was completely stunned. Hours passed before he could 
quit the house ; but when he did resume his journey, the 
words ** Dead ! lost! lost!^' were continually ringing in 
his ears. There was no need for argument. God had 
spoken, and from the presence of the living God the 
chimeras of unbelief and the pleasures of sin alike fled 
away. The religion of the Bible he knew to be true ; 
and turning his horse's head towards Plymouth, he rode 
slowly homewards, his plans of enjoyment all shattered, 
and ready to commence that rough and uninviting path 
which, through the death-prison at Ava and its rehearsal 
of martyrdom, conducted to the grave at Maulmain.'"* 

Our last example we take from the proceedings of a 
Society which has rescued many a wandering youth, and 
prevented many more from becoming prodigals. The 
class which the young foreigner attended was conducted 
by a dear friend of our own, and it was thus that at a 
meeting of the Young Men's Christian Association the 
circumstances were not long ago narrated : — " Nine years 
ago a young Frenchman presented himself for relief, 
requesting medicine and assistance. He was wretchedly 
poor, without food, almost without clothes, a deserter from 
the French army, and in consequence unable to revisit 
his native country ; and even here, he went in terror that 
by some means he might be arrested, and made to suffer 
* See Wayland's Life of Judson^ vol. i. p. 12. 



A RIGHTEOUS FATHER. 191 

for his fault. The medicine for which he asked the 
chemist gave him, and for relief he was directed to the 
Young Men's Christian Association. He came on Easter 
Sunday 1855, ^^^ found here the welcome with which 
you are always ready to greet a stranger who comes to 
throw himself upon your sympathy. He was placed 
under the care of a Christian gentleman, and under his 
guidance and teaching he learned the great truths of 
Christianity, and resolved to devote himself to the service 
of God. He continued for some time to attend your 
meetings, which were the source of much benefit to him ; 
but in his altered state of mind he considered it was his 
first duty to make what reparation he could for the fault 
of which he had been guilty in deserting his regiment. 
He returned to France, presented himself to the proper 
officers, and surrendered himself as a deserter. On his 
trial much surprise was expressed at his voluntary sur- 
render of himself, and the president specially interrogated 
him on this point. He replied : ' When I ran away from 
France I was in the darkness of nature, and under the 
power of sin ; now I have learned the gospel of the Lord 
Jesus Christ, and am His servant. It is by the teaching 
of His Word that I come back to my duty, and submit 
myself to you for the punishment I have deserved.' Kind 
friends took an interest in his welfare, and tried to pro- 
cure a mitigation of his punishment. They were suc- 
cessful. Twelve years' punishment was the ordinary 
penalty for his offence ; this was reduced to four, and the 



192 A RIGHTEOUS FATHER. 

severity of the imprisonment greatly mitigated. After 
undergoing it for a year and nine months, he was allowed 
to return to duty in the army. Here he was employed 
as a sort of regimental clerk for about two years, and then 
finally granted a discharge. Released from all obligation, 
he went to Geneva to study for the ministry. When his 
studies were completed, he laboured for some time in the 
south of France as an evangelist, and then was appointed 
to the charge of the French Independent Church at 
Guernsey. He now stands before you to acknowledge 
that this happy change of position, and far happier change 
of mind, he owes to the kindly influence of the Young 
Men's Christian Association. The starving French de- 
serter who sang in the streets of London for a morsel of 
bread, is the Pastor M , who now speaks to you." 



INDEX. 



Activity essential to enduring en- 
joyment, 159 

Addison, 148 

Advocate, story of an Edinburgh, 109 

Affliction, sobering uses of, 102 

Alexander's " Thoughts," 'j'; 

Alfieri, anecdote of, 137 

Alford, 149 

Alison's " French Revolution," 13 

Apologues : Abdallah and the ex- 
panding imp, 28 ; the Happy Isle, 
141 

Aratus, 5 

Arnold's, Dr., sister, 96 

Arnot on the Parables, 150 

Augustine's experience, 139 

"Aurora Leigh,^' 133 

Aytoun's "Bothwell," 61 

Barnes on Isaiah, 10 
Basilisk, the, loi 
Beattie's Life of Campbell, 27 
Bible expositors, 147 
Blake, Wm., and the angels, 173 
Bradford's farewell letter, 22 
"Brand plucked from the burning," 
104 



Brother, an angry, 161 ; who is he ? 164 
Brown's " Home Life," 172 
Brummell, George, 89 
Bunyan, 71 
Burns, 54 
Byron, 76 

Calvin, 147 

CandHsh's "Fatherhood," 119 

Charles of Bala, 151 

Chatterton, 71 

Childhood : its advantages in a Chris- 
tian home, 136 ; how to make it 
beautiful and happy, 174 

Children of Christian parents turn out 
well, 9 ; training of, 12 ; lost in 
Australian wilderness, 120; educa- 
tors of parents, 132 ; have no turn 
for abstraction, 132 ; acute ob- 
servers, 133 ; rich in imagination, 

173 
Christ, love to, 94 ; mediation of, 115 ; 

the manifestation of God, 116 
Clarke, Dr. A., quoted, 184 
Cleopatra's pearl, 55 
Cohen-Stuart quoted, 185 
Colton, career of Caleb, 91 



194 



INDEX. 



Commentators, early, 147 

Companions, choice of, 24, 62 

Conversion of Vanderkemp, 105 ; of 
W. Howard, 139 ; of an American 
soldier, 186; of Judson, 188 ; of a 
French deserter, 190 

Cords of love, 4 

Country, the far, 33 

Cowie of Huntly, 19 

Cowper, 156 

Crewdson, Mrs., quoted, 166 

Dante, 83 
Dobell's " Balder," 6 
Dwight's "Sermons," 123 

Egypt, 38 

Erasmus, 147 

Evans's "Frauds," etc., 58 

Exile's home-longing, 4 

Faber, F. W., 135 

Famine, a mighty, d^ 

Father, a righteous, 177 

Fatherhood of God, 118, 125 ; as 

portrayed by Jesus Christ, 179 
Fatherland, the, i 
Feeding swine, 81 
" Felix Holt," loi 
Festival, the, 145 
Flowers, children who had never seen, 

172 
"Friends in Council," 169 

.Gambling, 43 

Gifts, diversity of, 156 

God (see Fatherhood), His disposi- 



tion towards the repenting sinner, 
122 ; His mercy not hindered by 
His hbliness, 123 

Goethe's mother, 14 

Gospels, great and small, 'j^ 

Greswell, 149 

Grimshaw, 51 

Grotius, 147 

Gustavus Adolphus, 158 

Guthrie, Dr., 181 

Habits, bad, 27 

Hamilton, Lady, 92 

Happiness of Christians, 1.41 

Harris's " Patriarchy," 8 

Henry's Exposition, 148 

Herodotus, 87 

Home, the true, _ of humanity, God, 6 ; 
image of the church, 8 ; leaving, 
17 ; the first made by God, 172 

Hooper, 60 

Howard's, -William, conversion, 139 

Husks, 88 

Idealism ; its uses, 26 
Impracticable people, 169 
Income, keep within the, 62 
Intemperance, 55 
Isle, the Happy, 141 

James, J. A. : the Bible in his pocket, 

21 ; dying testimony, 152 
Jay's happiness in life, 95 
Judson, 188 

KiRBY, the entomologist, 14 

Kirke White, 21 

Krummacher, Daniel, anecdote of, 165 



INDEX. 



195 



Ladies, work of Christian, 158 
Laffitte ; how he made his fortune, 68 
Lawrence, Amos, on starting "just 

right," 30 
Livingstone, Dr. D., quoted, 173 ; 

John, 135 
Lorelei, the, 44 
Lost, joy in finding the, 119 
Love, identity of all true, 170 
Loveless natures, 168 
Lytton, Lord, quoted, 21 , 

Macdonald, Dr., 157 

Maclaren's "Sermons," 117 

Manhood, true, 5 1 

Masson's " Essays," 73 

Meeting, a happy, 113 

Melancthon's early piety, 134 

Milner, Joseph, 130 

Milton, 5 1 

Monsell, 176 

Montgomery, 55 

Moore's Life of Byron, 78 

Murray, Dr. N., and the old man, 158 

Napoleon and the EngHsh sailor, 13 ; 

his mother, 14 ; 
Nisbet, Mr., anecdote of, 45 

Olshausen quoted, 149 
Oosterzee, Van, 182, 184 

Peace with God — how obtained, 144 
Porson, 63 
Pringle, T., 25 

Prodigal, the ; his original abode, '}>S ) 
leaves it, ■^y ; new scenes and sen- 



sations, 41 : squanders his fortune, 
48 ; in want, 86 ; feeding swine, 87 ; 
comes to himself, 100; comes home, 
128 
Profusion, 84 

Quaker, the ; how he made his 
money, 68 

Raikes, R., 156 

Resolution, a wise, 97 

Riotous living, 49 

Robe, the best, 129; its significance, 

149, note 
Rogers, the martyr's, descendants, 10 

Sandeman, D., 93 

Savage, Richard, 92 

Shakspere, 88 

Sheridan, 54 

Sin, struggle with, 138 ; distinction 
between sins brute-like and fiend- 
like, 74 

Spendthrifts, 83 

Stier quoted, 166, 184 

Stork, the, 4 

Swindler's, the, progress, sj ; another 
58 

Swine in Egypt, 87 

Taylor, Jeremy, 156 
Temptation, 138 
Thiersch and his mother, 15 
Traveller's, the, dangers and duties 

39. 43 
Trench quoted, 149 



196 



INDEX. 



Unclean spirit wandering through 

dry places, y^, 
Usefulness, various ways of, 154 

Vancouver Indian and Sturgeon, 55 

Vanderkemp, 105 

Variety in God's kingdom, 155 ; in 



the minds of men, 1 56 ; in^tts an( 
ministrations, 157 

Whitfield, 157 

Wife, a, 15 

Wilkmson's "Ancient Egypt," 87 

Wordsworth, 6 



THE END. 



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